Research Day 2026 Recognizes Scientific Excellence and Collaboration
Feinberg students, staff, trainees and faculty celebrated scientific discoveries and collaboration and presented their research posters and abstracts at the 20th annual Lewis Landsberg Research Day on Thursday, Sept. 10.
Rex Chisholm, PhD, vice dean for Scientific Affairs and Graduate Education, welcomed attendees to this year’s event and presented the Medical Faculty Council Mentor of the Year awards to Hasan Alam, MD, MBA, chair and the Loyal and Edith Davis Professor of Surgery, and Rick McGee, PhD, associate dean for Professional Development and professor of Medical Education. Chisholm also presented the Tripartite Legacy Faculty Prize in Translational Science and Education to Daniela Ladner, MD, MPH, the John Benjamin Murphy Professor of Surgery and vice chair of research and innovation in the Department of Surgery.
“Welcome to the 20th annual Lewis Landsberg Research Day. Today is a special day in our academic calendar where we come together and recognize the important research happening here at Feinberg,” said Chisholm, who is also the Adam and Richard T. Lind Professor of Medical Genetics and a professor of Cell and Molecular Biology and of Surgery.
The Research Day keynote address was delivered by John Rogers, PhD, the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery.
During his lecture, Rogers highlighted his laboratory’s most recent developments featuring novel soft, flexible devices that aim to improve patient monitoring across an array of diseases, including cystic fibrosis and hydrocephalus, as well as advance the monitoring of a fetal health while still in utero.
Rogers also acknowledged the ideation and development of these devices would not be possible without his laboratory’s commitment to collaborating with departments across Northwestern and with other academic and industry partners.
“To illustrate the scale of our collaborative efforts, I compiled a list of faculty and staff co-authors on papers that we’ve published through our institutes over the last 3 years, a list that includes an impressive collection of 52 senior clinicians and medical researchers. We’re very fortunate to have the chance to work with such high-quality people, in interdisciplinary activities that create a deep, rich educational environment for the students and postdocs – my main mission as a faculty member,” Rogers said.
In the afternoon, attendees were invited to explore more than 440 research poster presentations held across campus at the Louis A. Simpson and Kimberly K. Querrey Biomedical Research Center, the Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center and the Northwestern Memorial Hospital Feinberg Pavilion, part of a campuswide poster competition.
Fiona Webb, a research study assistant in the Department of Preventive Medicine, presented her research on the effects of MyActivity, a moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) promotion intervention embedded in cancer care through the electronic health record, on functional performance in patients with a history of breast and endometrial cancer.
Over the 48-week study period, Webb found that participants who completed MyActivity while wearing a Fitbit that administered the program demonstrated improvements in functional performance through various tests, including a walking test, a two-minute step test and an arm curl test, compared to participants who did not complete the program. Webb’s poster won first prize in the Public Health and Social Science Research category.
“Our findings suggest that integrating physical activity support into cancer care through tools like wearable devices and the electronic health record can lead to sustained improvements in functional performance among cancer survivors while offering a scalable approach to survivorship care. Being involved in research of this nature has been extremely rewarding, and the opportunity to connect with our participants and hear about the impact on their lives keeps me motivated,” Webb said.
Colin Lemire, a fifth-year student in the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP), presented his research exploring how perivascular macrophages — specialized cells that live alongside blood vessels in the retina — interact with immune cells and contribute to inflammation in experimental autoimmune uveitis, an animal model of a vision-threatening disease.
He found that perivascular macrophages are necessary for the initiation of inflammation and that depletion of these cells can protect the retina from damage. Lemire’s research took second place in the Basic Science Research category of the poster competition.
“By better understanding how perivascular macrophages regulate inflammation, my work could help identify new ways to prevent harmful immune responses in the eye and ultimately develop more targeted treatments for patients with inflammatory eye disease,” Lemire said.
For his research, John Fallon, a second-year medical student, performed a multisite cohort study of academic U.S. medical centers investigating the effect of social determinants of health on patients receiving a retinal exam meeting National Quality Forum 0088, a value-based care measure that accounts for documentation of diabetic retinopathy severity and evaluation for macular edema, a leading cause of vision loss in patients with diabetic retinopathy.
From his analysis, Fallon found that older adults and women are less likely to receive dilated fundus exams documenting diabetic retinopathy severity and evaluation for macular edema.
“This disparity in care may delay detection of complications in patients with diabetic retinopathy that contribute to preventable vision loss,” Fallon said.
Clinical Research
- First Place: Thomas Policicchio, “Does Homologous Recombination Deficiency Alter Radiosurgical Response? A Comparative Study of BRCA-Mutated Brain Metastases”
- Second Place: Seongyeon Yang, “Ultrasound-Derived Stretch Reflex Threshold Estimation Using Tendon-to-Bone Distance During Tendon Tapping in Post-Stroke Spasticity”
- Third Place: Mercy Berchie, “Association of a Residual-Based Retinal-Systemic Health Discordance Index with Mortality”
Basic Science Research
- First Place: Anneke Thorne, “Diet-Induced Circadian Thermogenesis and Adipose-Targeted RNA Therapeutics”
- Second Place: Colin Lemire, “Retinal Perivascular Macrophages are Necessary for Experimental Autoimmune Uveitis”
- Third Place: Ping Xie, PhD, “Adaptive CD73 upregulation undermines PARP inhibitor efficacy and creates a therapeutic opportunity for combined blockade in advanced prostate cancer”
Public Health and Social Science Research
- First Place: Fiona Webb, “A Multi-Site Electronic Health Record-Integrated Physical Activity Promotion Intervention (MyActivity) Improves Functional Performance in Breast and Endometrial Cancer Survivors”
- Second Place: Maryann Mason, PhD, “A Digital Twin Temporal Transformer for Precision Prevention of Violent Death
- Third Place: Byrd Cook, “Utilizing patient and provider perspectives to inform implementation of hospital discharge interventions for opioid use disorder”
Dr. Virginia Bishop Community-Academic Research Partnership Award, awarded by the Alliance for Research with Chicagoland Communities (ARCC)
- Breaking Barriers to Vision Care Partnership: Dinai Yelverton, founder and CEO of the Experiences That Matter Foundation, and David Ramirez, MD, assistant professor of Ophthalmology in the Division of Pediatric Ophthalmology
Medical Faculty Council Mentors of the Year: Hasan Alam, MD, MBA, chair and the Loyal and Edith Davis Professor of Surgery, and Rick McGee, PhD, associate dean for Professional Development and professor of Medical Education.
Tripartite Legacy Faculty Prize in Translational Science and Education: Daniela Ladner, MD, MPH, the John Benjamin Murphy Professor of Surgery and vice chair of research and innovation in the Department of Surgery.
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