Below you can review information on the BIDMC PIs available to mentor students as part of the Summer 2025 BIDMC-Shapiro Scholars program, including their Harvard Catalyst page and the project they have available for Summer 2025 research. Projects will be submitted through February 2025, and removed once they are filled.
Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine
Balachundhar Subramaniam, M.B., B.S.
Project: An opportunity to explore the intersections of science and spirituality
Project Type: Clinical
Project Description: Science: cognitive decline following surgery, mindfulness for depression, wellbeing, consciousness research.
Project: Inflammation Research Laboratory
Research Type: Basic
Project Description: Participate in ongoing projects and undertake training in Immunology and Molecular Biology.
Project: Uncovering Mechanisms of Heart Toxicity Induced by Cancer Therapies
Research Type: Basic
Project Description: Our laboratory is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms that cause cancer therapy-associated heart toxicity. We have several ongoing projects investigating anthracycline-induced heart failure and arrhythmias due to targeted cancer therapies. We are also trying to understand how different types of tumors affect cardiovascular disease development and progression. We use animal models (zebrafish and mice) as well as human biobanking samples for these studies.
Principal Investigator: William Lewis, MD
Project Title: Computational Photography and Image Processing in Dermatology
Project Type: Translational Research
Project Description: Students will have the opportunity to work with me on project(s) related to image processing and software development for dermatology, especially related to visualizing erythema in patients with skin of color and inflammatory disease. Students will have the opportunity to work on image processing algorithm development, validation, and implementation. Through this project, they will gain experience with the optical properties of skin and light-tissue interaction, image capture and processing, and dermatologic disease. Motivated students, especially those with previous experience in software development, may be able to contribute to the creation of a mobile phone application. It is expected that the student's work will lead to the generation of a first-author publication in a dermatology journal.
Project: Obesity and Comorbidities Research
Research Type: Translational
Project Description:
Basic, translational and clinical research on novel diagnostic and therapeutic agents for obesity and comorbidities ( diabetes, fatty liver disease, cardiovascular diseases)
Project Title: Student Intern
Research Type: Basic
Project: Our lab studies the impact of alcohol on gut, brain, and liver inflammation in mouse models of alcohol associated liver disease. We are looking for a motivated medical student who is interested in working on an exciting project to help better understand the effect of alcohol on the immune system in the GI tract. The focus of this project is on the impact of alcohol on regulatory dendritic cells in the GI tract. We hypothesize that alcohol exposure impairs the function of regulatory dendritic cells driving inflammation in the GI tract and liver. Working with current member in the lab, you will have the opportunity to characterize the effects of alcohol on gut specific dendritic cell gene expression, cytokine production, or metabolism. You will gain exposure to various techniques that may include western blots, ELISAs, analysis of cellular metabolic pathways with Seahorse, confocal microscopy, flow cytometry, cell sorting, or qPCR. Within a two-month time period, our goal is for you to learn two new techniques and preform experiments to discover how alcohol alters dendritic cell function. If there is a particular technique or pathway you would like to explore, this experience can be tailored to your specific interests.
You can read more about Szabo Lab here
Project Title: Clinical research project on transparency and patient engagement in healthcare
Research Type: Clinical
Project Description: Join a team of clinician-researchers to study topics related to transparent communication in healthcare. Projects may involve open notes, medical error disclosure, use of AI to help underserved populations better understand their health information, educational projects related to transparency, or others. Some projects may also include the opportunity to partner with students or trainees at Stanford through a Harvard-Stanford Transparency Learning Colab.
Project Title: Collaborative Precision Oncology via Virtual Tumor Boards
Research Type: Translational
Project Description: While precision oncology holds great promise, the interpretation of genomic data remains complex and challenging. Molecular Tumor Boards (MTBs) require efficient data integration, variant interpretation, and clinical decision-making support, which are often hampered by fragmented processes and a lack of interoperability. This project will address these challenges by developing an integrated vMTB platform that unites disparate genomic resources, enabling seamless collaboration across institutions, including smaller centers, to improve patient outcomes. Project Goals: Test the usability and functionality with oncologists and pathologists of an interoperable, secure, and user-friendly vMTB platform that streamlines data sharing, variant interpretation, and clinical decision-making; leverage advanced data analytics; and enhance the translation of research discoveries into personalized treatments. The platform is a new version of Alicanto Cloud https://www.alicantocloud.com/ developed by the Division of Clinical Informatics https://dci.bidmc.org/ at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center led by Dr. Yuri Quintana https://research.bidmc.org/yuriquintana and a follow on project of the recent workshop on cancer informatics https://www.dcinetwork.org/workshops/september-2024 hosted by DCI.
Project Title: Community Health Research
Research Type: Translational
Opportunity Description: Work with Talya Salant MD, PhD (Dir Community Health Research and Equity) at Bowdoin St. Health Center. Assist with a research project focused on a gap assessment of research in community health centers. The research will involve conducting and analyzing in-depth interviews and a survey across practices.
Project: Multi-omic approaches applied to Neurological diseases
Research Type: Translational Research
Project Description: We are looking for talented and motivated students interested in translational neuroscience research at both the basic and clinical levels. Our laboratory uses high-throughput technologies, including next-generation DNA sequencing, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics, to generate a highly detailed molecular atlas of patients with Neurological diseases and healthy controls. We aim to create a framework for uncovering proteins, genes, pathways, and potential biomarkers that will improve our understanding of underlying disease mechanisms and predict disease course.
Daniel Goldenholz, M.D., Ph.D.
Project: Epilepsy & Data Science Lab Research Project
Research Type: Clinical
Project Description: Our lab explores artificial intelligence/machine learning and data science applications to clinical epilepsy. Some examples include seizure forecasting, studying the worlds largest seizure diary database, automating EEG interpretation, using LLMs and agents to augment non-experts in epilepsy care, and ways to improve clinical trials.
Project: Essential Tremor Biomarkers Cohort
Research Type: Clinical
Project Description: Essential tremor (ET) is one of the most common movement disorders and affects 7 million people in the United States. Very little is understood about the natural history and the biochemical and neuropathophysiological mechanisms of this very common condition. As such, effective oral medication or noninvasive treatment options are lacking. Severely disabled patients can undergo surgical treatment and can be effective in the short-term, but their chronic long-term outcomes indicate that ET natural history and prognosis is complex. This project leverages data from the Framingham Heart Study as well as the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Essential Tremor Cohort.
Project: Understanding inflammatory resolution physiology in pain comorbid with insomnia
Research Type: Translational
Project Description: Insomnia and chronic pain are highly common and comorbid disorders. Our laboratory currently investigates whether dysregulation of specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPMs) play a critical role in the perpetuating cycle between insomnia and pain. The research student will be involved in human studies that investigate the role of SPMs on inflammation and pain associated with insomnia. This is a multidisciplinary learning opportunity involving wet-lab work, sleep assessments, pain assessments, assisting in research activities related to screenings and patient visits to the Clinical Research Center, statistical analysis of data, and final project presentation.
Project: Developing Digital Tools to Detect and Monitor Early Alzheimer's Disease
Research Type: Translational
Project Description: Our lab uses a data-driven approach to develop and test digital tools in Alzheimer’s disease. These include tools to adaptively measure specific cognitive functions in language (naming), visuospatial function (spatial working memory), frontal/executive function and declarative memory. there are opportunities for direct patient contact in data collection.
Project Title: Developing a multi-component intervention to support perinatal mental health
Research Type: Translational
Project Description: The student will have the opportunity to participate in a large four-year study that aims to develop and test an intervention that helps doulas support perinatal mental health. The initial development and beta testing of the intervention will be completed in June 2025. The student will join the study team in finalizing data collection, reviewing and analyzing the data, preparing the results for presentation, and preparing study materials for the subsequent cluster-randomized controlled trial. The student will work with a diverse team of researchers and implementers.
Project Title: Identifying associations with Postpartum Hemorrhage and Neonatal Adverse Outcomes
Research Type: Clinical
Project Description: This opportunity will involve working with a large dataset of over 5,000 deliveries to identify factors associated with maternal and neonatal adverse outcomes. The student should anticipate half their time being spent on data extraction and half their time being spent on analysis and writing up results. It is expected that the student with be first author on an abstract to the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine Annual Meeting and subsequently publish their findings as a manuscript.
Project: Advanced Therapies for Healing Orthopaedic Tissues
Research Type: Translational Research
Project Description: This project offers an exciting opportunity for students to develop a project at the interface of soft tissue repair, tendon aging, biomaterials, and therapeutics. The aim of this project is to conduct research on translational orthopaedic research, with a focus on exploring the potential of various biomaterials and drug delivery strategies to improve soft tissue repair and to address issues related to tendon aging. The student will work under the supervision of Benjamin Freedman, PhD, a renowned researcher in this field. Possible hands-on projects include the development of novel biomaterials for soft tissue repair, testing the efficacy of various drug delivery strategies for promoting tissue repair, and exploring the role of inflammation in tendon aging. The student will have access to cutting-edge equipment and resources to facilitate their research. Alternatively, the student can choose to write a first-authored review paper/perspective that summarizes current knowledge on translational orthopaedic research in biomaterials, drug delivery, and tendon aging. This would involve conducting an extensive literature review, analyzing and synthesizing data, and writing a comprehensive paper that will contribute to the knowledge base in this field.
Project: Medical Imaging and Fracture Risk
Research Type: Translational Research
Project Description: This research opportunity is ideal for motivated medical students interested in the cutting-edge intersection of orthopedics, radiology, and technology. The project focuses on advanced medical image processing, artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and data analysis to address real-world clinical challenges. Students will gain hands-on experience using AI to analyze computed tomography (CT) scans and be introduced to the clinical problem of fragility fractures.
As part of the team, the students will contribute to a high-impact research initiative aimed at developing an automatic framework to predict fracture risk in vulnerable populations, such as older adults and individuals with diabetes.
Project: Exploration of bacterial resistance and antibiotic development
Research Type: Translational
Description: Summer student would contribute to projects related to novel antimicrobial development, assessing a range of pathogens for their susceptibility to new antibacterial agents, contributing to hollow fiber infection model experiments in which human pharmacokinetics are mimicked in a system that is highly predictive of efficacy against human infections. Please see: https://www.kirbylab.org. Here is an example of a hollow fiber infection model setup: https://www.fibercellsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/FiberCellSystems_PkPd_Omics.pdf
Project: Revealing the mechanisms regulating metabolism regulated cell death.
Research Type: Basic
Description: Our lab integrates high throughput chemical genomic approaches with thorough biochemistry to reveal new mechanisms regulating metabolism induced cell death. This will be a unique opportunity to learn the fundamentals of mechanistic biology and how these could be leveraged to create translational hypotheses that could be tested in pre-clinical models .
Our lab interest resides on the interface of cancer metabolism, cell death pathways and metal biology . Join to explore innovative biology .
Anthony (Tony) Cunningham, Ph.D.
Project: Using Sleep as a Tool to Understand Mental Health and Wellness
Research Type: Basic
Project Description: Location: Center for Sleep and Cognition (Clinical Research Center), Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
Website: https://www.centerforsleepandcognition.com/
Description: Dr. Cunningham’s primary research focus is understanding the role of sleep and sleep loss in emotion and memory processing, and how knowledge of these systems can be applied to both healthy and clinical populations. The long-term research goal of the lab is to understand changes in underlying brain networks responsible for cognitive and emotional processing following sleep loss, and translate this knowledge into the development of novel and effective therapeutic interventions. The primary project that a student would be able to support is an investigation of the effects of multiple nights of sleep restriction on behavioral and neural processing of emotions. Students will have the opportunity to engage in cognitive assessments, collection of neurobiological markers (EEG, PSG, fMRI), and potentially observe clinical assessments and administration of neuromodulation techniques. The study will be conducted in the recently renovated Clinical Research Center at BIDMC. Networking, presentation, and publication opportunities will be offered to the accepted student. The student must be able to commit to 30-40 hours/week during the summer program period with opportunities to work with the lab at a smaller scale both before and after the scheduled summer period. The role will include direct patient interactions on the research unit, in the hospital, and in the community, and will require a substantial amount of organization, recruitment, and hands-on training in clinical neuroscience research techniques.
Project: Cannabis and Cannabinoids in Psychiatric Illness
Research Type: Clinical
Project Description: In the context of changing cannabis policy in the United States, many people are using cannabis and cannabinoids like CBD to treat psychiatric illness. We will review the literature and build upon our 2021 American Journal of Psychiatry publication on this topic to conduct a systematic review. Findings will be presented at a national meeting and published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Project: Data Science in Mental Health
Research Type: Clinical
Project Description: The student will be involved in projects related to mental health. The students will be mentored throughout the process and will have a project of their own as an original article in addition to comments, reviews, or perspectives in journals on topics of their interest within the mental health space. The populations I study in depth include both those on the psychosis and autism spectra. We have many datasets available, so the students can get a head start on having deliverables. Accommodation for neurodivergent students is acknowledged and implemented in the mentorship process.
Project: Soman Laboratory for Neuroimaging Opportunity in Advanced Neuroimaging: Quantitative Susceptibility and Oxygen Extraction Mapping in Neurological Disorders
Research Type: Clinical
Project Description: The Soman Laboratory for Neuroimaging (SLN) is offering a research opportunity for students passionate about exploring advanced neuroimaging techniques and their application to neurological disorders. The project focuses on analyzing brain structures—both normal and abnormal—using state-of-the-art susceptibility imaging methods, including various forms of Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) and Oxygen Extraction Fraction (OEF) mapping. These techniques will be applied to clinical data from multiple ongoing studies.
This research opportunity has the option to be completed performed remotely, with regular Teams meetings with the Principal Investigator and lab members. Projects include analyzing brain images using visual and/or quantitative methods, with the possibility of contributing to conference abstracts and publications. Students with programming skills (Linux, Bash/Csh, Matlab, FSL, FreeSurfer, Python, TensorFlow) may have the chance to engage in more advanced computer vision analyses of imaging data. This program offers the opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research in neuroimaging, with potential for co-authorship on scientific papers and presentations.
Project Title: Clinical Research in Endocrine Surgery
Project Type: Clinical Research
Project Description: Several clinical research projects available for HMS student participation on the topic of guideline-concordant care in thyroid cancer management. The incidence of thyroid cancer has risen dramatically over the past three decades with no change in thyroid-cancer specific mortality. National guidelines urge de-escalation: performing less extensive surgery and more judicious use of radioactive iodine. However, adherence to these guidelines remain poor even a decade following their release. These projects seek to understand the actionable factors that influence guideline-concordant care. Students may participate in one or more of the projects depending on interest and bandwidth.
Project 1: Systematic review of guideline adherence in cancer care. Students may participate in article screening and writing up the manuscript.
Project 2: Qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with clinicians to understand the provider- and system-level factors influencing guideline-concordant care. Students may participate in coding and analyzing interview transcripts and drafting of manuscript.
Other Projects: Clinical research projects in Endocrine Surgery, including chart review or large database analyses in thyroid, parathyroid, or adrenal pathologies.
Project Title: Cinematic (Movie) and Cultural Representation of Deafness
Project Type: Clinical Research
Project Description: Review of movie databases that explore hearing loss as a theme. Goal is to better understand how deafness and hearing loss are (mis)represented through cinema and ultimately society. The deeper idea is to suggest associations regarding how cinema shapes perceptions around hearing loss and interventions regarding hearing loss.
Project: Summer Research Internship
Research Type: Translational Research
Project Description: Our lab is focused on translational biology of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and epigenetic regulation of the gene, 5 alpha reductase 2, that regulates prostate growth.
Project: Cancer Screening Disparities Manuscript Writing
Research Type: Clinical Research
Project Description: Summer Research Opportunity: Addressing Healthcare Disparities in Underserved Populations
Are you passionate about reducing healthcare disparities and contributing to impactful research? Join our lab for a summer research opportunity to explore disparities in health outcomes among underserved populations, with a specific focus on sociodemographic factors such as limited English proficiency (LEP), race, gender, substance abuse, and mental health.
Project Overview
Our lab is dedicated to uncovering the underlying causes of healthcare disparities and finding actionable ways to address them. This summer, students will have the unique opportunity to choose a specific research focus area within our lab's broader mission. In previous projects, we've investigated disparities in cancer screening among diverse populations in urban safety-net health systems. We have published on breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer. Findings highlighted how sociodemographic factors—including race, language, insurance type, and mental health—affect screening rates and outcomes.
Project Structure
- Remote Preparation (January-June): Students will participate in remote zoom planning meetings with the team to get a flavor of the different projects and select a project that is of interest.
- In-Lab Rotation (June-August): Data analysis and manuscript preparation will be the main focus. Students will have access to a ready-to-analyze dataset. The goal will be to draft one or two research papers suitable for publication, depending on the scope of their chosen topic.
Key Areas of Interest
- Disparities in healthcare for populations with Limited English Proficiency (LEP)
- Racial and gender-based disparities in health services
- Impacts of substance abuse on health outcomes
- Mental health's influence on healthcare access and quality
What You'll Gain
- Hands-on experience with real-world data from underserved communities
- Mentorship in research methodology, data analysis, and academic writing
- An opportunity to contribute to research that can directly influence health policy and improve outcomes for vulnerable populations
- The chance to publish your work in peer-reviewed journals
If you are driven to make a difference and eager to gain research experience in healthcare disparities, we encourage you to apply!