By Kat Procyk
Photography by Rayni Shiring/University of Pittsburgh
The 31st Annual School of Medicine Graduate Student Research Symposium, held Sept. 23, 2026, at The Assembly, showcased the innovative discoveries and scientific achievements of the next generation of scientists and physician-scientists from the University of Pittsburgh.
Eight students delivered oral presentations, including the Stephen L. Phillips Scientific Achievement Best Publication Award lecture, while 170 posters were showcased across three sessions for approximately 300 attendees throughout the day. The symposium also featured a lecture from the recipient of the Distinguished Mentor of the Year award. Hosted by the Biomedical Graduate Student Association, the symposium provided valuable opportunities for students to connect with faculty members, mentors and fellow researchers.
This year’s keynote speaker, Frederick “Fritz” P. Roth, John K. Vries Professor of Computational Biology and chair, Department of Computational and Systems Biology, School of Medicine, explained how his lab is building a kind of “lookup atlas” for human genetic variants, so physicians can better tell which DNA changes actually cause disease.
Right now, most DNA changes found in patients are labeled as “uncertain,” which isn’t helpful clinically, he said. His team uses high-throughput experiments to systematically test thousands of variants per gene and see which ones break protein function, using examples related to cholesterol, kidney stone disease and lung/liver disease. He showed that these experimental maps can improve diagnosis, reveal when risk depends on things like vitamin levels or genetic background, and work especially well when combined with modern artificial intelligence predictions—all as part of a global effort to map the effects of human genetic variation.
31st Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium Award Winners
The Stephen L. Phillips Scientific Achievement Award was presented to Xujian Wang from the computational biology graduate program, while Cade Sterling from the microbiology and immunology graduate program and Nathan Schneider from the neurobiology graduate program were runners-up.
Delphine Gomez, associate professor of medicine (Division of Cardiology), received the Distinguished Mentor of the Year award, while Jishnu Das, associate professor of immunology, and Stacy Gelhaus, visiting associate professor of pharmacology and chemical biology, were finalists.
Alisa Omelchenko from the computational biology graduate program received the Most Well-Rounded Student of the Year award. Runners-up included Swapnil Keshari from the computational biology graduate program and Lauren Cooke from the molecular pharmacology graduate program.
The Biomedical Image of the Year Award went to Gavin Treadaway from the microbiology and immunology graduate program with runners-up, Chloe Koon from the microbiology and immunology graduate program; Nicole Horan from the neurobiology graduate program and Tori Keefauver from the neurobiology graduate program.
