Two students in the University of Florida College of Medicine’s Medical Student Research Program (MSRP) were honored this spring for their research under the mentorship of Patrick Tighe, M.D., M.S., associate professor of anesthesiology and the Donn M. Dennis, M.D., Professor in Anesthetic Innovation.
Tatiana Maser ’24 received the Lawrence M. Goodman Trust Award for her research project, titled “Investigating the Effect of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disparities on Postoperative Pain and Opioid Use in Hospitalized Geriatric Surgical Patients.”
“Getting to work with Dr. Tighe for my MSRP project was such an amazing educational experience, and I’m very grateful for the time he takes to mentor medical students like me,” she said. “I also worked with Anis Davoudi, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in the department, and her help and support were invaluable as well. My entire experience with the Department of Anesthesiology during this project was so overwhelmingly positive and it only makes me more excited to (hopefully) join the field in the future.”
Justin George ’24 was a finalist winner for his project, titled “Prediction of Postoperative Delirium Using Electronic Health Records Data.”
“Dr. Tighe served as an indispensable mentor who introduced me to machine learning, and I will always be grateful for the new skills that I have obtained under his guidance,” he said. “Although I have not yet decided on a specialty, anesthesiology is one of my top interests due to my valuable experience working with Dr. Tighe and the UF Department of Anesthesiology.”
Students in the MSRP participate in a 10-week summer research project after their first year of medical school. Students are paired with a UF Health Science Center faculty member and have the opportunity to present their research and compete for awards with prizes during an annual research day. This year, the poster event was held Feb. 28 via Zoom. Medical students presented 112 posters at the event. The awards ceremony was held March 3 at the Harrell Medical Education Building and via Zoom.
Tighe also serves as co-director of the Perioperative Cognitive Anesthesia Network (PeCAN) and associate professor of orthopaedics and information systems and operations management. As part of the UF AI Initiative, he currently serves as Steering Committee co-chair for the Academic Hub for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the Health Sciences at UF, and he represents the College of Medicine on the UF AI Research Working Group.
We are extremely grateful to Dr. Tighe for his outstanding mentorship of the next generation of physicians and researchers. Congratulations to all!
