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Student Research Day 2019

Resident Research

As an academic program, we encourage scholarly activity of our residents. This does not mean that we require all of our residents to take time off for a dedicated research experience. However, should you be interested in one or two years of basic or clinical research,  we provide you with opportunities to do so.


Upstate Surgery - Basic Science Research

Currently, we have three basic science research laboratories within the Department of Surgery.

  • Sepsis & Nutrition Laboratory (PI: Cooney)
  • Critical Care Laboratory (PI: Kollisch)
  • Surfactant Biology Laboratory (PI: Wang)

Extramural Research

Some of our residents have had very successful research years off campus. Recently, we have had residents participate in fully-funded extramural research at the NCI-Surgery Branch, Vanderbilt University the University of Virginia, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center where our residents published in surgical oncology, thoracic surgery, plastic surgery and colorectal surgery, respectively.

Our current research resident, Alexandra Dimmer, MD, is participating in a fully-funded research opportunity within the Harvey H. Beardmore Division of Pediatric Surgery at McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, QC. 


Upstate Surgery - Clinical Research

For residents who prefer to complete the program in 5 years, we provide alternative opportunities for scholarly work. We are very open to research projects related to outcomes and quality improvement, as many of our faculty members have an interest and expertise in this arena.

Upstate provides a robust clinical trial environment with several of our surgical divisions participating in multi-centre trials. Please follow the link to our clinical trials.

We have multiple faculty members with either formal training or a strong interest in outcomes and quality improvement research and are always looking for residents to collaborate with.

Moreover, there are plenty of clinical research opportunities available, due to the large number and complexity of the patients we see in our institution. Some of our divisions are involved in clinical trials, which interested residents can participate in. 


Education Research

Finally, we have increasing opportunities for educational research. For example, our program has been one of the original 12 institutions (e.g. Northwestern, Harvard, Indiana University) in the American Board of Surgery supported SIMPL trial to assess resident performance in the operating room. The study was presented at the American Surgical in 2017. Since then the project has expanded to over 100 programs and more than 200 000 performance evaluations have been submitted. Currently, we participate in the VITALs trial that attempts to create national learning curves for standard surgical procedures based on this continuously expanding dataset.

Upstate University Hospital
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