News & Insights|Announcement
PAIR Center Students Complete Summer Research 2025
August 12, 2025
Excerpt
Over 14 years, the PAIR Center has supported mentored research opportunities for students. We’ve mentored 38 undergraduate, graduate, and medical students through a number of training programs. Under the leadership of Erich Dress, Assistant Director of Research Operations, our Center provides a unique, well-rounded research experience for the student mentees.
Our approach
Our sustainable approach to student mentorship includes a student orientation, methods workshops, shadowing opportunities, service events, off-campus excursions, and a curated Summer Speaker Series.
This year’s series included a line-up of PAIR Center Core Faculty, Affiliated Faculty, trainees, and staff. These stellar researchers and clinicians spoke to our students about their career journeys and how their unique paths have led to their current research interests.
Thank you to all of this year’s presenters and panelists: Dr. Christopher Chesley, Brian Bayes, Nicholas Bishop, Dr. Tamar Klaiman, Bethany Sewell, Eric Underwood, Dr. Anne Song, and Dr. Kathryn Connell.
This summer, the PAIR Center was fortunate to have seven students from three programs join us to work on a variety of projects in serious illness, palliative care, and health services research.
Berkman Summer Internship in Palliative Care
The Berkman Summer Internship in Palliative Care is a clinical and research fellowship for medical students that provides early exposure to hospice and palliative medicine. All four of this year’s Berkman Scholars participated in research activities with Core Faculty at the PAIR Center and presented on their work in final presentations on August 8th.
Paul Andorful, second year student at Morehouse School of Medicine, was mentored by Dr. Rachel Kohn on her project, Tracking Recovery in Acute Injury to the Lungs Study (TRAILS), specifically on evaluating the construct of dignity in acute respiratory failure survivorship.
Juliette Copeland, second year student at Drexel University College of Medicine, and Daniel Akuoko, second year student at Morehouse School of Medicine, were mentored by Dr. Katie Auriemma. Juliette assisted with the project Identifying Meaningful Outcome Metrics in Severe Brain Injury. Daniel supported the work on Validation of Electronic Health Record Goals of Care Classification with Patient- and Surrogate-Reported Assessments.
Jessica Mauricette, second year student at Drexel University College of Medicine, was mentored by Dr. Joanna Hart. Her project was titled, The Role of Uniformed Security Responses in Medical Intensive Care Units.
Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research (SUMR) Program
The SUMR Program through the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) introduces talented undergraduate students to research in the fields of health services, population health, and clinical epidemiology. The Program culminates in a five-day symposium where the students present about their mentored research projects.
This year the PAIR Center worked with Sonia Gazula, a second year student at Penn Dental, and Rachael Suh, a junior pursuing a BA in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Sonia and Rachael were mentored by Dr. Joanna Hart and presented at the SUMR Symposium on their work on the project, Healthy Lungs: Comparing Ways to Promote Smoking Cessation for Underserved Patient Populations Referred for Lung Cancer Screening.
Get Experience in Aging Research Undergraduate Program (GEAR-UP)
GEAR-UP, a joint venture between LDI and the Population Aging Research Center (PARC), engages students in the demography and economics of aging, health, and health care.
Sayeem Hossain, a rising senior at Binghamton University, worked with Dr. Christopher Chesley this summer on a project investigating mechanisms of disparities for critically ill patients with acute respiratory failure and sepsis. Sayeem was tasked with adapting a health equity framework in the deductive coding of semi-structured qualitative interviews.