{"id":146481,"date":"2025-04-18T15:05:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T19:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=146481"},"modified":"2025-04-18T15:05:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T19:05:53","slug":"graduate-students-share-new-discoveries-to-treat-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/graduate-students-share-new-discoveries-to-treat-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate Students Share New Discoveries to Treat Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nasser Yousef came to UCF as an undergraduate biomedical sciences<\/a> major, unsure if he would pursue a career as a physician or a scientist. Today, as a Ph.D. candidate at the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, he has dedicated himself to medical research because he says scientific discovery can impact patients worldwide.<\/p>\n

He presented his research at the Burnett School\u2019s spring Graduate Research Symposium, taking first place for his findings on how acute viral infections differ from persistent viral infections, with a goal of developing better therapies to treat them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always had an interest in infectious diseases and how to combat them since they\u2019re an ongoing threat and we need to stay one step ahead of them,\u201d Yousef said. \u201cI hope my research provides the scientific knowledge necessary to develop effective therapeutics.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s presentations included the effects of cancer drugs on the heart, mapping the stomach to better understand abdominal pain and a DNA analysis of patients with rare genetic diseases. The event\u2019s goal is to better prepare young scientists to present their findings to peers, funding agencies and potential employers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis symposium is like a real-world scientific conference. You have to be prepared to present and answer questions from experienced researchers,\u201d said Jackie Zhao, a biomedical sciences professor and organizer of the symposium.<\/p>\n

Each fourth-year Ph.D. student and second-year M.D.\/Ph.D. students required to present research at the symposium, but less senior Ph.D. candidates can be invited if faculty judge their research to be stellar. That was the case of third-year Ph.D. student Eugene Baffoe, who placed second in the competition for a study on new insights into how T-cells protect us against influenza.<\/p>\n