BME alum Arman Shahriar selected as a 2021 AMA Research Challenge finalist
January 13, 2022 — Arman Shahriar, a graduate of the Department of Biomedical Engineering's undergraduate program, was selected as a finalist in the American Medical Association’s (AMA) 2021 Research Challenge.
Shahriar presented his poster called, “Socioeconomic Diversity of Matriculating U.S. Medical Students by Race and Ethnicity, From 2017 to 2019” to a panel of judges on December 8.
The AMA Research Challenge is the largest national, multi-specialty research event for medical students, residents and fellows, and international medical graduates. The challenge had over 1,100 submissions, 50 semifinalists, and five finalists.
In an interview with AMA, Shahriar dove into his findings on socioeconomic diversity, which he considers to be the "least explored of all the forms of diversity in the medical student body." He says:
“What we found is that there is a pretty significant socioeconomic diversity gap which persists across races and ethnicities. So it's been well known for some time that overall medical students come from high-income households, but this has never been looked at stratified by race and ethnicity.”