Medical student research achievements

UQ MD Students’ Reported Research Achievements: 2018-2023

Check out our MD student research publications.

Student research highlights

Remember: If you have any research news or achievement to share, don’t be shy, and send to studentresearch@uq.edu.au. Include your details and information about your achievements plus any images or links.

The following students have gone above and beyond in 2024:

Congratulations to Year 3 students Saki Maehashi and Andre Lara Fisher and Year 4 student Kabir Arora have had their research paper the title of “Neurolipidomic insights into anxiety disorders: Uncovering lipid dynamics for potential therapeutic advances” published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews (Impact Factor 7.5). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38838875/

MD-PhD candidate Benjamin Cai (Frazer Institute) has recently returned from presenting a seminar on his PhD research at Oxford University and also the European Congress of Rheumatology in Austria. See a photo of Ben's presentation (JPG, 407.3 KB).

Isaac Rad, MD-PhD has received the best publication award for his systematic review, from the UQ School of Pharmacy, in the category of “Biotherapeutic delivery and diagnostic solutions; pharmaceutical biology; or biomedicinal discovery and development.” Congratulations Isaac!

MD students Carlos Santaolaya and Juhi Malhotra and Tabitha Baca have published as co-authors.

Santoalaya C, Malhotra J, Fowler JA, Warzywoda S, Debattista J, Mills DJ, et al. Sexual and reproductive health integration into pre-travel consultations: a scoping review. Journal of Travel Medicine. 2024; Volume 31, Issue 4, May 2024, taae024, https://doi.org/10.1093/jtm/taae024

Warzywoda Sarah, Fowler James A., Debattista Joe, Mills Deborah J., Furuya-Kanamori Luis, Durham Jo, Lau Colleen L., Mullens Amy B., Istiko Satrio Nindyo, Santaolaya Carlos, Malhotra Juhi, Dean Judith A. The provision of sexual and reproductive health information and services to travellers: an exploratory survey of Australian travel medicine clinicians. Sexual Health. 2024;21(1).

Fowler JA, Mendis M, Crook A, Chavez-Baldini U, Baca T, Dean JA. Exploring Aromanticism Through an Online Qualitative Investigation With the Aromantic Community: “Freeing, Alienating, and Utterly Fantastic”. International Journal of Sexual Health. 2024;36(1):126-43.

Martin Lo, MD-PhD now a Junior House Officer at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, has excelled during his MD-PhD journey and significantly contributed his PhD work in motor neurone and Huntington’s disease to international research in COVID-19.

Martin (1^st Author) wrote a review for the President of the International Complement Society proposing anti-complement therapies in severe COVID-19
Martin (1^st Author) collaborated with the co-developers of UQ’s vaccine showing that the virus activates the complement system via a passive dis-inhibitory mechanism.
Martin’s work was recognised at the International Complement Workshop 2021 with a poster award.
His contribution to an anti-complement therapy (anti-C5a, vilobelimab) was recently approved by the FDA for severe COVID-19.

Congratulations to Dr Arielle Kasindi (UQ-OCS class of 2020). Dr Kasindi is first author in this paper that was published in the winter edition of the Ochsner Journal.

Kasindi A, Carstarphen KJ. Bulbar onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in an African American older adult. Ochsner J. 2023 Winter;23(4):353-356. doi: 10.31486/toj.23.0045

Students who have gone above and beyond in 2023

The following students have gone above and beyond in 2023:

Congratulations to Mike Mullen: Journal of Orthopaedic Research (JOR) Excellence in Basic Science Award. Year 3 Ochsner student Mike Mullen has received the 2023 award for "Excellence in Basic Science from Journal of Orthopaedic Research" Mike is first author on article “Mechanical Strain Drives Exosome Production, Function, and miRNA Cargo in C2C12 Muscle Progenitor Cells” published in Journal of Orthopaedic Research in Vol. 41, Issue 6. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jor.25467

This award celebrates seminal work published in JOR in the Basic category. A grant of $1000 is presented at the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) Annual Meeting, selected by the Editors from eligible papers accepted by the Journal of Orthopaedic Research in the prior calendar year. This award is sponsored by Wiley on behalf of the Journal of Orthopaedic Research.

Hannah Nugent (Year 4 MD) was the recipient of the Royal College of Pathologists Australia (RCPA) Student Research Scholarship. This scholarship is an annual scholarship for medicine, dentistry, or science students that supports the completion of a pathology-focused research project. View more details of the scholarship. Congratulations to Hannah!

Luke Jackel-David awarded the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) Aleks and Elise Brumby Summer Research Scholarship.

Read about Luke’s award.

MD-PhD student Isaac Rad has published a paper in Theranostics (IF=11.6)

“A systematic review of ultrasound-mediated drug delivery to the eye and critical insights to facilitate a timely path to the clinic. Isaac J Rad, Luke Chapman, Karnaker Reddy Tupally, Martin Veidt, Hussain Al-Sadiq, Robert Sullivan and Harendra S Parekh. Theranostics 2023; doi:10.7150/thno.82884; Accepted”

You can have a look at the online advance article. [Author manuscript]

ANZAHPE Student Prize

Congratulations to Year 2 Ochsner student Michael Mullen, who won the Student Prize for his extended abstract entitled “Coping Self-Efficacy, Social Support, and Self-Stigma of Help Seeking Inhibition Among Male and Female Medical Students” which he will present at the annual conference of the Australia and New Zealand Association for Health Professions Education (ANZAHPE) 26-29^th June 2023.

Runner-up best oral presentation was won by Aaron Lerch who presented research titled: The Efficacy of Post-Operative Drains for Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion”, and presented a poster titled “The Draining Art of ACDFs” on the same topic, at the ASSC (Australasian Student Surgical Conference) and the RACS (Royal Australasian College of Surgeons) ASC (Annual Scientific Congress), 28-30 April 2023 in Adelaide.

Congratulations to Year 2 Ochsner students Michael Mullen and Dhaval Patel who have had their research accepted to present at the ANZAHPE annual conference in June 2023. The Australia and New Zealand Association for Health Professions Education (ANZAHPE) is the premier medical education association in Australia and New Zealand. The ANZAHPE conference is being held on the Gold Coast from the 26th – 29th June.

Michael’s talk is entitled “Coping Self-Efficacy, Social Support, and Self-Stigma of Help Seeking Inhibition Among Male and Female Medical Students”.

Dhaval’s talk is entitled “Exploring Well-Being Through the Lens of Coping Self-Efficacy and Calling in Medical Students”.

Students who have gone above and beyond in 2022

Congratulations to Chloe Yap who won the 2022 CSL Florey Next Generation Award. The CSL Florey Next Generation Award is a new award conferred to a current PhD candidate who has demonstrated outstanding capability, creativity and potential in the biomedical sciences and/or health and medical research. This award was developed from the CSL Young Florey Medal.

UQ Winner – Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand 3M+1Q

Congratulations to MD-PhD student Joshua Monteith, who placed first overall and won the People’s Choice award at the inaugural Medical Deans Australia and New Zealand (MDANZ) 3M+1Q competition on Saturday 26 November. All medical schools in Australia and New Zealand were invited to nominate one student to compete in the MDANZ 3M+1Q competition, a new initiative by the Research Educators Network (REN). Over 100 attendees with representatives from 20 schools attended the webinar.

Cody Frear, MD-PhD: Congratulations to Cody who won the runner-up place for the Faculty of Medicine Higher Degree Research Student of the Year. This is a prize given to the most impactful and productive PhD within the Faculty over the past year. It is very competitive among all PhD candidates across three schools and three Research Institutes within the Faculty.

Raushan Lala, MD-PhD: Raushan presented a talk at the Trauma 2022 conference (Australasian Trauma Society Meeting) entitled ‘Recovery of platelet aggregation function following removal from the traumatised vascular milieu’ for which they won the Best Medical Presentation award.

Year 3 medical student Fiona Wong, recently published as first author, a research article in the International Journal of Environment Research and Public Health (IJERPH). Biodiversity Effects on Human Mental Health via Microbiota Alterations.

Jessica Mills, MD-PhD - Jessica has just had a review paper published in the journal Biomaterials Science for which she is not only first author but also drew the cover art for the journal. Additionally, Jessica’s article was chosen as a “Hot Topic”.

Article with the cover
This article is part of the themed collection: Biomaterials Science Recent HOT Articles

Aaron Lerch - Best Poster Presentation at the 2022 Australasian Students Surgical Conference Gold Coast.

Students who have gone above and beyond in 2021

Andrew Su, MD-MPhil - Research news from Andrew Su, who is on his way to Stanford University in California to start his Fulbright Scholarship! Andrew has been very busy lately and had a first author paper accepted. The paper, “A Deep Learning Model for Molecular Label Transfer that Enables Cancer Cell Identification from Histopathology Images” will be published in NPJ Precision Oncology. This is high impact Nature Partner Journal. And Andrew also received the Medical and Science Student Grant to attend the Pathology Update 2021 Conference of The Royal College of Pathologists of Australia (RCPA). 02-04 July, 2021 in Sydney. Although he couldn’t travel to Sydney and present in person, he was able to attend virtually and presented his poster “Understanding the tumour immune microenvironment of stage III colorectal cancer using multiplexed imaging mass cytometry”.

Hannah Triscott - Best Oral Presentation at the AACR-KCA joint conference on Precision Medicine in Solid Tumors in Seoul, Korea/ Zoom (https://www.aacr-kca.org/)

Hannah Triscott - Awarded a START Single Cell Fellowship (Millennium Science).

Hannah Triscott - ASI Attendance Bursary Recipient to the 49th Annual Scientific Meeting.

Joshua Monteith, MD-PhD, recipient of the Douglas H.K. Lee Family scholarship

Chloe Yap, MD-PhD, 1st author paper in Cell (impact factor = 41.5) https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01231-9

Chloe Yap won the Judges’ Award for the Queensland Women in STEM Prize 2021

Joshua Monteith, MD-PhD, won 1^st place poster prize in the 2021 Faculty of Medicine HDR Symposium

Chloe Yap, MD-PhD, won the Highly Commended prize in the Emerging Achiever Science Award at the 2021 Women in Technology Awards.

Gautam Dagur, MD-PhD Ochsner, awarded Ochsner MD-PhD scholarship

Jonathan Hill, MD-PhD Ochsner, awarded Ochsner MD-PhD scholarship

Xavier de Luca, MD-PhD, awarded UQ Research Stimulus Package Fellowship

Rosie Stoke, MD-PhD, won the UQ 3MT Competition.

Stellina Lee (MD4) was the Essay Competition Winner in Royal Australasian College of Surgeons: Women in Surgery 2021. You can read Stellina’s essay:
“Women in Medical Leadership: Having a Quota Makes for Better Representation.”

Stellina also published a first author paper in: The Neuroscientist.
Lee, Stellina YH., Yates, N., & Tye, S. (2021). “Inflammatory Mechanisms in Parkinson’s Disease: From Pathogenesis to Targeted Therapies.” The Neuroscientist. 1 (22). DOI: 10.1177/1073858421992265

Andy Ou (MD Year 2): Congratulations to Andy Ou for receiving the 2021 Parkinson's Foundation Summer Student Fellowship for his project, “Targeting novel regulatory mechanisms to inhibit chronic neuroinflammation and neurotoxicity in Parkinson's disease.” The Parkinson's Foundation established this 10 week fellowship to support students in their pursuit of Parkinson's research.

Chloe Yap MD-PhD received the 2020 Mater Research Institute HDR Prize (Biomedical), and more recently, the 2021 RANZCP Psychiatry Interest Forum Scholarship to the RANZCP 2021 Congress.

Two of our Clinician Scientist students, Lachlan Crawford (MD-MPhil) and Chloe Yap (MD-PhD) completed their Graduate Certificate in Medical Leadership Program in 2020.

Andy Ou (MD Year 2) has a recent publication in Scientific Reports
Ou ZA, Byrne LM, Rodrigues FB, Tortelli R, Johnson EB, Foiani MS, Arridge M, De Vita E, Scahill RI, Heslegrave A, Zetterberg H, Wild EJ. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor in cerebrospinal fluid and plasma is not a biomarker for Huntington’s disease. Sci Rep 11, 3481 (2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-83000-x

Students who have gone above and beyond in 2020

Hennes Tsang (MD-PhD Y3) – Hennes presented an abstract “Neoantigens Are Typically Associated with Intact HLA Class I Presentation in Early-Stage Follicular Lymphoma”, at the American Society of Hematology in 2020.

https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/136/Supplement%201/37/470362/Neoantigens-Are-Typically-Associated-with-Intact https://doi.org/10.1182/blood-2020-135954

Katie Robbins (MD-MPhil 2020 Ochsner) – Katie was awarded an Ochsner Clinical School Post- graduate Fellowship

Miles Seidel (MD-PhD 2020 Ochsner) – Miles won 1st place for his oral presentation at the Ochsner Research Day 22 September 2020

Greg Quaife Ryan (MD-PhD 2020) – It was a good year for Greg who received his PhD in September 2020 and graduated the MD in December 2020. Additionally, he won the International Society for Heart Research PhD student publication prize at the CSANZ2020 conference in December 2020, for the second year in a row!

Crystal Seng (MD-MPhil Y4) – Crystal won the 1^st place best Poster Presentation at the Australian Physiological Society

Martin Lo (MD-PhD) and Joshua Monteith (MD-PhD) presented their research at the Faculty of Medicine Research Expo: 26 to 30 October.

Sam Huth (MD-PhD) Sam was invited to participate on an expert panel of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

Crystal Seng (MD Year 3) Runner-up Best Poster Presentation Prize at The Australian Physiological Society Meeting. 1-4 December 2019, Canberra.

Adam Briner (MD-PhD) Adam’s photo of a cell made the journal cover of Cell Reports.

Jonathan Hill (MD-PhD Y3 Ochsner) Jonathan was awarded a prestigious scholarship from OARSI (Osteoarthritis Research Society International) for his collaborative research on osteoarthritis across three countries

Zorana Lynton (MD-PhD) at Queensland Brain Institute won the best image prize at the QBI Art in Neuroscience Competition for an image of brain cells called “Lightbulb Moment”.

Cody Frear (MD-PhD Y3) Won the 2020 National FameLab 2020 national FameLab championships

Three of our MD Research Higher Degree students were awarded prestigious Fulbright Scholarships. Fulbright scholars:

Chloe Yap (MD-PhD) - Institute of Molecular Bioscience and Mater Research Institute
Adam Briner (MD-PhD) - Queensland Brain Institute
Andrew Su (MD-MPhil) - Institute of Molecular Bioscience

2020 3MT

What a year for 3MT and our MD-PhDs. Did you know…..seven of our MD-PhD students entered the 3MT competitions in 2020. Four made it to the finals of their faculty/institutes, and two won!

Chloe Yap (Mater Research Institute), Joshua Monteith (UQ Diamantina Institute), Zorana Lynton (Queensland Brain Institute), and Hollier ONeill (Critical Care Research Group) all made it through.
Additionally, MD-PhD Chloe Yap won the Faculty of Medicine 3MT People’s Choice competition.
At the UQ Finals (16 October): MD-PhD Zorana Lynton represented the UQ Institutes, and Hollier O’Neil represented the Faculty of Medicine, with Hollier winning the UQ 3MT Runner-Up prize for 2020.