By Ty Steve, second-year MA in Biomedicine student

When I finished my 45-minute presentation last December, I was able to take a deep breath and relax. The presentation was the last step in the entire research portion of the Biomedicine program. When I began the research process in the second semester of my first year, I thought that a 45-minute presentation would be slightly challenging. After months of researching, analyzing, and preparing I was worried that 45 minutes would be too little time. The research portion of the Biomedicine program had its speed bumps that I had to go over, but the final presentation went smoothly to end my ~9 months of research.

The Research, Design and Statistics class begins in the second semester of our first year. This is where we discuss the process, pick our topic, and begin our literature review. Selecting the topic came fairly easy to me because I knew my field of interest. I focused on dermatology and thought about different topics and ran them by my boss who is a dermatologist. I settled on analyzing single gene positive DermTech tests. DermTech is a new adhesive patch test that a dermatologist can use to collect a sample of skin and have the RNA analyzed for the presence of two different genes. Depending on the presence or absence of the two genes gives the physician an idea as to whether the lesion tested is melanoma or not. If both genes are positive then there is a high chance the lesion is a melanoma, if both genes are negative, then the lesion is not a melanoma. The gray area that I was interested in was whether or not the lesions were melanoma when one gene tested positive and one tested negative. If you would like to read more about DermTech, you can visit their website www.dermtech.com.

Determining the research topic can be tricky for students because it has to be something that is doable in the few months that we have to conduct the research and it needs to be something that they have an interest. I suggest that new students begin to think about potential topics during their first semester so that the deadline does not sneak up on them.

Once the topic has been selected, the next step is to conduct a literature review to familiarize yourself with everything about your topic. For some students, this is a big task because they may be researching something that has a lot of literature already published. For me, DermTech is a fairly new test so I was able to read every published article on DermTech and then I extended my research into other genetic tests. It was an exciting topic for me not only because it was dermatology related, but also because genetic testing is a growing field that is being used to test for more than just skin cancer and companies even offer genetic testing to see your ancestry and other health risks.

After completing most of the literature review, it was time for summer break and to begin collecting data. For me, this consisted of looking through DermTech reports from the clinic that I worked. For other students, it consisted of working with monkeys in a lab in Texas, analyzing hospital records in NJ, and for many, it was conducting surveys at various locations in Virginia. To read more about students research topics go here https://emu.edu/now/news/2017/12/auto-immune-disease-health-literacy-among-topics-fall-biomedicine-research/

Collecting data was by far the most challenging portion of the research process. I originally wanted to collect over 100 single gene positive DermTech results, but I quickly realized that was not going to happen. This was the first speed bump that I had to get over, and to get over it I had to accept that I had set my sights too high and to adjust my expectations and moved forward. I certainly learned about people and the difficulty that comes along with research but will spare you with all the details.

When the school year starts back up in fall all of the second year students, including myself, had collected our data and were ready to analyze the results. Some of us had already started this process, but the actual deadlines were now fast approaching. While running statistical tests to determine significance, we were also writing our thesis paper. The thesis paper was around 5,000 words; however, some students had more and some less. It is important to begin writing the paper early to allow for plenty of revision time. By the time the paper is due toward the end of the fall semester, presentation day is just around the corner.

The presentation is 35 minutes long with a 10-minute question and answers section. So the presentation needs to be long enough to fill the time, but not too long where it cuts into the questions and answers. After presenting anyone present can ask a question, but they tend to come from Dr. Julia Halterman who is our research advisor, and other questions come from the professors that we selected to be on our research committee. Students and other attendees can also ask questions. The entire research process is short, a little less than a year, but packed full of work and deadlines and feelings of stress and accomplishment. I wish all future students the best of luck with the process and hope they learn a lot about their topic, discover something new, and learn about themselves in the process.