Roessler Scholarships Prepare Medical Students as Research Physicians

Even before Katherine Tzou started medical school at the Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health, she knew research would be an integral part of her training as a future doctor.

The summer before she entered the program, Tzou applied for the Samuel J. Roessler Memorial Medical Scholarship and received funding to join Dr. Michael Caligiuri’s internationally renowned research lab and contribute to his studies investigating cancer. Now as Tzou approaches the end of her second year, she is ready to take both her medical and research knowledge into the clinics -- fulfilling the ultimate goal of the Roessler Memorial Scholarship.

For close to 50 years, hundreds of OSU medical students have had the opportunity to participate in research because of Roessler support. This spring and summer, 28 more recipients (see below) will spend up to three months in a laboratory, collaborating with an OSU faculty sponsor to gain research experience of their own.

Among them, Omar Ezziddin, a first-year medical student will be working in Dr Chanden Sen’s laboratory and will use a state-of-the-art imaging device in order to quantify wound healing in mice.

“I am looking forward to seeing if the hypothesis regarding the studies I plan on doing will be proven correct, and I am most excited to see the capabilities of this new technology,” Ezziddin said. “This imaging device is a great new way to determine the kinetics of wound healing aside from other popular methods, and it provides a new, exciting modality to view wound-healing.”

Jon Henry, also a first-year medical student, will be conducting a cardiovascular study in Dr. AJ Cardounel’s laboratory located at the Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute. He plans to study the effects an anti-cell growth drug has on preventing the renarrowing of a vessel following angioplasty.

“This [drug] will be used to prevent the complications seen clinically in more than one million angioplasty patients each year,” Henry said.

Both Ezziddin and Henry received a Roessler Research Scholarship through an application process that takes place three times a year. Students are required to submit a proposal, written in their own words, along with a letter of support from the OSU faculty member sponsoring their project. The proposals are then evaluated and selected by a faculty review committee.

“Many students have benefited from the Roessler experience as well as faculty members who have used the results generated by the students for major nationally funded research projects,” said Dr. Norton Neff, Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Education and faculty coordinator of the Roessler scholarship. “The Samuel J. Roessler Memorial Scholarship is providing an opportunity for students to see firsthand how research might benefit patients. We foresee that many of our awardees will become the research physicians of the future.”

Recipients of this years Roessler Memorial Medical Scholarships (May-Aug 2005) include:

The Samuel J. Roessler Memorial Medical Scholarship was established by Anna J. Roessler in memory of her son, Samuel J. Roessler. The awards are available to medical students of The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health for medical research under the guidance of its faculty.

For more information on the Roessler scholarship, please visit the Landacre Society, or contact Jennifer Marin at (614) 292-8725 or marin-2@medctr.osu.edu.

The Ohio State University
School of Biomedical Science