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Brandon L

- Research Program Mentor

MD candidate at Boston University

Expertise

Clinical medicine of all topics, ophthalmology, oncology, cardiology, pulmonology

Bio

I have extensive experience with conducting clinical medical research of any subject. Topics can range anywhere from optimizing telehealth for patients with chronic lung diseases, to understanding COVID-19 and physician burnout, to finding risk factors for bleeding after surgery. I have particular expertise with review articles, including literature reviews, scoping reviews, and systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis. Outside of research, I love creating and playing music with friends, playing golf, skiing, trying new foods, and exploring cities!

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Mitochondrial diseases: a review of current knowledge and future research

Mitchondrial diseases come in many forms and are rare. Many of these diseases do not have effective treatment and can be devastating. In order to guide future scientists in pursuing appropriate research on mitchondrial diseases, it is important to perform a literature review to see what current knowledge already exists and reveal gaps in the literature where future research must be performed. This paper can be a literature review or scoping review, which means that students would read through existing publications to understand the current state of the literature, and use what they've read to create their scientific research paper. Students will end up with a scientific research paper that can be published to journals and presented at various local and national conferences. They will learn skills of literature review, research study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript review, and, if applicable, journal submission process.

A new era of medicine--telemedicine: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an explosion of the use of telemedicine. Patients, physicians, and medical institutions have learned and invested into telemedicine. It is still unknown what patient attitudes may be towards long-term telemedicine use. There are some advantages of telemedicine, such as being more convenient, but also disadvantages, like not having human-to-human contact. This paper can be a systematic review and meta-analysis, which means that students would read through and extract data from existing publications, and "combine" the data from many studies to end up with new data that explains all the included studies. Students will end up with a scientific research paper that can be published to journals and presented at various local and national conferences. They will learn skills of literature review, research study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript review, and, if applicable, journal submission process. They will also learn skills specific to systematic review and meta-analysis, including using statistical data analysis software.

How does socioeconomic status affect appendix surgery outcomes?

We are beginning to understand that socioeconomic status (SES) can affect many parts of a person's health. It would be interesting to see how SES affects a specific surgical procedure, such as appendix surgery. The data for this project can be collected in a variety of ways, such as from existing, published data. The student would read through and extract data from existing publications, and use that data to synthesize their paper. This paper could take a more qualitative approach, summarizing the current literature and pointing out interesting findings in existing research, or take a more quantitative approach by analyzing complications of appendix surgery by zip code (to correlate SES). Students will end up with a scientific research paper that can be published to journals and presented at various local and national conferences. They will learn skills of literature review, research study design, data collection, data analysis, manuscript review, and, if applicable, journal submission process.

Coding skills

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Teaching experience

I have 6+ years of tutoring experience and 2+ years of mentorship experience with high school and college students. My philosophy as a mentor is to equip the students with the skills to solve problems on their own and guide them through the process of research so they leave as a better researcher. I am fun and energetic, and I bring this energy to all my session. I get really excited over all types of research, and am really passionate about seeing a student grow as a researcher in a topic they want to explore.

Credentials

Work experience

Harvard Medical School/Mass Eye and Ear Ophthalmology (2021 - Current)
Research assistant
Boston Medical Center Department of Ophthalmology (2021 - Current)
Research assistant
Boston Medical Center Department of Internal Medicine (2020 - 2022)
Research assistant
Rutgers School of Pharmacy (2016 - 2018)
Research intern

Education

Boston University
BA Bachelor of Arts (2022)
Medical Sciences
Boston University
MD Doctor of Medicine candidate
Medicine

Completed Projects

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