Medical Scholars Research Day set for Nov. 4

Dr. Lisa Willett, program director for the Tinsley Harrison Internal Medicine Residency Program, vice chair for education and professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Medicine, will give the keynote address at the 11th annual Medical Scholars Research Day at noon Monday, Nov. 4, in the J. Harold Harrison, M.D. Education Commons.

Willett, who also serves as president of the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine Council, will speak about “Academic Medicine: Shaping the Future.”

Her address, which is sponsored by the Medical College of Georgia Department of Medicine’s Translational Research Program, precedes poster presentations by 113 second-year students at MCG’s main campus in Augusta. The students participated in research over the summer between their first and second years of medical school. Thirty-one students from the AU/UGA Medical Partnership in Athens presented their research on Monday, Oct. 7.

Willett is a graduate of the Tulane University College of Engineering, earning a degree in biomedical engineering in 1992. She earned her medical degree from the UAB School of Medicine, where she also completed her internal medicine residency and subsequently joined the faculty.

An honored educator and clinician, she is a past recipient of the Clinician-Educator of the Year Award and the Leader and Mentor in General Internal Medicine Award from the Society of General Internal Medicine, Southern Region. She also received the National Award for Scholarship in Medical Education from the Society of General Internal Medicine and the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.

Nearly 63 percent of the first-year class worked with mentors both on and off their respective campuses. Programs like Medical Scholars Research Day are aimed at providing more opportunities for students to participate in clinical and translational research.