The SOAR (Student Opportunities for Academic Achievement Through Research) program
is a competitive program for rising M2 students, offering an opportunity to engage
in inquiry and scholarly activity with a faculty mentor.
About SOAR
The SOAR program is a full-time eight-week summer program that enables Floyd School
of Medicine M.D. students to work closely with faculty mentors, exploring basic science,
translational, or clinical research, or projects focused on health care quality or
patient safety, or educational research. Students and mentors apply for participation
in the fall, followed by a selection and matching process that aims to align students'
interests with mentors' expertise.
SOAR Student Earns Two Research Awards at PHERI Showcase
Congratulations to Brady Cawthon, second-year medical student and SOAR participant
at the Floyd School of Medicine, who received both Outstanding Medical Student Research
and Best Overall Research at the October 30th PHERI Research Showcase.
Brady's project, “Pan-Cancer Analysis of JAK3 Variants Identifies Significant Racial Differences in
a Regionally Representative Cancer Cohort,” examined racial differences in genetic variant frequencies across multiple cancer
types. His findings highlight important patterns that may help address the underrepresentation
of Black patients in cancer genomics research.
This research reflects a true collaborative effort involving Brady's SOAR mentor,
Dr. Anna Blenda of the School of Medicine Greenville, our Floyd School of Medicine
statistician, an undergraduate student from Davidson College, and researchers from
the Prisma Health Cancer Institute.
Challenge the conventional. Create the exceptional. No Limits.
