Health Services Research Center Summer Scholar Program Celebrates Successful 2025 Program with IDEATOR Entrepreneurial Pitch Competition and Graduation

UH Research & Education Update

The University Hospitals Health Services Research Center (HSRC) 2025 Summer Scholar Research Program culminated on July 18 with a symposium that featured impressive individual research, a Shark Tank-style team pitch competition and an emotive graduation ceremony that commemorated the achievements of a remarkable group of diverse individuals.

HSRC Summer Scholar Program 2025 Participants.

The six-week mentored research program involved 15 high school, college and medical students, who gained knowledge on the power of science and innovation, with a strong focus on health services research. Scholars enjoyed opportunities to explore personal interests and career options in health-related fields, in addition to engaging in mentored individual research and team-based projects.

“The highly competitive HSRC Summer Scholar program provided a talented cohort of students with an elevated and dynamic education experience centered on broadening and deepening their understanding of the transformative role of medical research in advancing state-of-the-art patient care,” says Samudragupta Bora, PhD, Founding Director of UH HSRC and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine (CWRU). “We were excited to host this program for the second time, fueled by the scholars' passion and engagement in class discussions, interactions with prominent physician-scientists, and individual and group projects. The richness of experiences scholars gained showcased the power of medical research in transforming patient care while maximizing positive clinical and social outcomes, ideally encouraging them to pursue combined clinical and scientific endeavors in the future.”

IDEATOR – Identifying Healthcare Problems and Scalable Solutions

Among the highlights this year was the inaugural UH HSRC Summer IDEATOR innovation competition. Modeled after the UH Ventures & Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) IDEATOR, an ideation sprint and pitch competition that takes place each spring, the summer program also aimed to encourage entrepreneurial thinking and underscore the power of innovation in solving problems that impact individual patient experience and population-level outcomes. In weekly sessions across five weeks, scholars learned about and applied design thinking, problem solving and critical thinking skills, understanding the importance of involving stakeholders and their experience in finding sustainable and scalable solutions to improve health and wellbeing. Five teams, comprising three scholars in different stages of education, were each tasked with developing solutions to the maternity and infant mortality crisis in Northeast Ohio and throughout the United States.

Each team identified a specific aspect of maternity or infant health to be addressed and a real-life solution to pitch at the program’s concluding event to a panel of three judges, Dr. David Axelrod, Deputy Director of UH HSRC and Professor of Surgery at CWRU; Kendra Gardiner, Director of Technology Commercialization & Industry Relations at UH Ventures; and Sara Edwards, Director of Design Operations at UH Veale Healthcare Transformation Institute.

Two teams won the IDEATOR competition, with each team member receiving $100 Amazon gift card. Team GAD proposed leveraging community-driven spaces, such as food banks, to provide free, essential postnatal supplies to mothers in need. Team Roots of Care developed a solution around the use of a mobile van to bring basic obstetric care to low-income pregnant women. “The students did a phenomenal job with their presentations,” says Patricia Colella, MBA, Lead Innovation Strategist at UH Ventures.

Cultivating Research Skills and Interests to Train the Next Generation of Scientists and Clinician-Scientists

Individual presentations showcased what scholars learned from their respective research projects. Mentors included Dr. Bora; Gareth Kantor, MD, UH Anesthesiologist and Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine, CWRU; Helen Long, PhD, CCC-SLP, Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences, CWRU; and Julia Blanchette, PhD, RN, UH Nurse Scientist and Assistant Professor of Medicine, CWRU.

Presentations included the following:

• The Quality of Diabetes Information on Social Media – Gabrielle Madden, Hawken Upper School, Ohio
• Speech Assessment Barriers in Early Cerebral Palsy Care – Harry Balanta Franky, Shaker Heights High School, Ohio
• Experiences Managing Type 1 Diabetes in Athletes – Henry Fritz, Solon High School, Ohio
• Systematic Review of Family-Based Interventions to Improve Speech Outcomes in Preterm Infants – Ishan Kelkar, Needham High School, Massachusetts
• The Role of Processed Foods and Candida Albicans in Gut–Brain Axis Disruption and ADHD – Joshua Agarwal, Lexington High School, Massachusetts
• Learning Diabetes Self-Management Through First-Hand Experiences – Theo Trem, University School, Ohio
• Dangerous Impact of Western Social Media Representation of Diabetes Diet in Context of South Asian Culture – Akhil Datla, CWRU, Ohio
• Delphi: AAC & Multimodal Communication for Children with Cerebral Palsy –  Julianna Pollard, Loyola University Chicago, Illinois
• Speech Therapy Referral Practices for Children with Cerebral Palsy – Leela Garg, Duke University, North Carolina
• Do Antibiotics in Infancy Cause Childhood Asthma? – Max Grillo, John Carroll University, Ohio
• Expert Insights on Tailoring Interventions for Cerebral Palsy – Ana Kasumova, NEOMED College of Medicine, Ohio
• Does the United States Childhood Vaccination Schedule Contribute to Higher Rates of Adverse Events? – Danielle Reese, NEOMED College of Medicine, Ohio
• Association Between Neonatal Brain Injury and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes of Preterm-Born Infants in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis – Patricia Chen, CWRU School of Medicine, Ohio
• Identifying Different Models of Care Delivery for Post-NICU Follow-Up in Sub-Saharan Africa – Tanvi Sumit, CWRU School of Medicine, Ohio
• Investigating Diabetes Management Apps and Their Role in Diabetes Distress – William Danh Tran, NEOMED College of Medicine, Ohio

Students Gained Invaluable Research Perspective and Inspiration

“This program in general showed me the world is full of passionate researchers dedicated to advancing health equity in all manner of disciplines,” says William Danh Tran, a medical student at NEOMED said of his experience. “Before starting this program, I was hesitant to consider a career in research, but after working with and learning from such a vibrant cast of researchers, I can genuinely say I want to pursue more population health research in the future.”

Joshua Agarwal, a rising senior at Lexington High School, says he thoroughly enjoyed the Summer Scholar program. Participating “opened my eyes to a side of medicine beyond the typical bench-to-bedside focus,” says Joshua. “Through hands-on research projects, lessons on research methods, and hearing physicians share career journeys, I gained a deeper appreciation for how health services research shapes healthcare systems.”

By studying speech referral practices for children with cerebral palsy (CP), Leela Garg, a freshman at Duke University, was able to understand that earlier speech therapy intervention greatly improves communication skills in children with CP. “I found the research to be meaningful and impactful because it is contributing towards the goal of standardizing referral practices for these vulnerable children,” says Leela. “In my prior research experience, I had never conducted a retrospective chart review, so learning how to work with quantitative data was a great learning experience for me.” Leela credits her mentor, Dr. Helen Long, with teaching her how to make pivot tables to organize data and helping her use coding to conduct statistical analysis.

Such takeaways are exactly what the program aimed to provide participants. “Research and medicine are fast-paced and continually evolving endeavors that improve and enhance the lives of countless patients and communities,” says Dr. Bora. “The HSRC Summer Scholar Research Program takes great pride in cultivating scientific interest and skills among prospective clinician-scientists and scientists, in a manner that fuels their potential to better integrate the power of science and medicine as the future of healthcare.”