The semifinals of the 2024 AMA Research Challenge—the largest national, multispecialty research event for medical students, residents and fellows, and international medical graduates—takes place virtually Nov. 7–9.
Ahead of the big event, participants may be wondering what it takes to bring home a grand prize of $10,000, presented by Laurel Road. Doing that first requires getting through the semifinals, which are voted on by medical students, residents and fellows, and physicians. Event registration is open to anyone, and AMA members can score entries to help determine the best in class.
From this group of posters—whittled down from an initial field of more than 1,300—a group of AMA members, medical students, residents and fellows will be selected, with the top five poster presentations from the event being presented before a panel of judges on Dec. 8.
If past incarnations of the AMA Research Challenge are any indication, the final group of posters is likely to represent the innovative thinking needed to drive medicine forward. Past winners have covered topics such as an early diagnostic test for cholangiocarcinoma, a rare cancer; a genetic biomarker tied to miscarriages; and an upper respiratory bacterium that exacerbates chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
What does it take to create a winning poster? Feedback from judges in past versions of the event offers some insight on that question. We asked
Research that resonates with you
Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP, was among the AMA Research Challenge judges in the 2020 and 2021 finals.
Dr. Arora offered that physicians aren’t experts in every aspect of care, so it’s very difficult to find something that will resonate with every judge.
“Any topic can resonate as long as the relevance is explained well,” said Dr. Arora, who is dean for medical education at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. “This is an important skill for all scientists, no matter what kind of science you are doing—bench to bedside to community. COVID-19 is a perfect example of how all aspects of science—from basic virology to community and global health deployment of vaccine and public health interventions—are critical and relevant. So, the key aspect is whether and how the relevance is communicated to the audience.”
For medical students looking to hone their research skills, the AMA offers resources and programs that bring you from the basics all the way to the AMA Research Challenge where you can compete for a $10,000 prize.
Dive deeper:
- 4 tips for medical students to get their start as researchers
- Medical student research FAQ: Get started, showcase your work
- 1st-time poster presenters offer tips on medical student research
- Poster presentation 101: Make your work stand out at a conference
Show that your work matters
An MD-PhD student at Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Leelabati Biswas won
the 2022 AMA Research Challenge. Her project focused on improving the detection of egg aneuploidy, a condition in which eggs have the wrong number of chromosomes—a major cause of pregnancy loss.
The judges appreciated the clinical relevance of the research, particularly its potential to improve fertility care.
“This was a very impressive set of portfolio assays, assessments, techniques that were brought together to answer an important question, or lead us in the direction of answering such an important question related to aneuploidy and miscarriage, ultimately clinically for our patients,” said judge Sanjay Desai, MD, the AMA’s chief academic officer.
“What will be interesting is that the next phase of this, this is an example of precision medicine. And so how do we actually translate this now to humans and to integrate this into those complex decisions around family planning to actually inform and help advise our patients moving forward?”
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Keep your visuals clean
When it comes to poster presentations, space is limited. One common trap some students fall into is overloading information.
“I subscribe to the POSTER format, which I modified from an old paper that I saw,” Dr. Arora said.
The POSTER acronym stands for:
- Plan ahead.
- Organize visuals.
- Select main message.
- Tell the story.
- Eliminate unnecessary text.
- Rehearse.
“If you include that method in your preparation, you can see when there is a too-much-information problem in your presentation,” Dr. Arora said. “It is important to review for just the text you need.”
Dive deeper:
- AMA Research Challenge: How to prepare a research poster
- What you need to know to ace a poster abstract
- Learn about previous Research Challenge winners
- How to get published in medical school and boost your CV
- To publish research in medical school, avoid these 4 mistakes
Your narrative needs to make sense
2023 AMA Research Challenge winner Jesse Kirkpatrick’s poster was about finding a better way to detect a deadly cancer called bile duct cancer (cholangiocarcinoma). His methods for doing that were highly technical—using special probes that can spot certain enzymes linked to cancer then testing them on mice.
Judge Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, MD, PhD, MAS, touted the story that was told by Kirkpatrick’s poster and presentation.
“He's piecing together a complicated story, and to do it across different mouse models, to do it with staining and to show in general, but then to show the specificity, I think that's the way you build a story like this,” said Dr. Bibbins-Domingo, editor-in-chief of JAMA® and JAMA Network®.
“It's sort of painstaking work, and I really appreciated that he was able to bring that story to life,” she added. And then also to let us know what the next step for clinical translation is going to be moving from mouse then to where we ultimately want to be for the health of patients.”
