By Lillian Talbot and Nuri Kim

Members of the MSTP have found ingenious ways, big and small, to contribute to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Reflecting on the ways the MSTP mobilized as a community, we began to ask ourselves whether and how MSTP students are well-equipped to act during medical and scientific crises. Through reflection and discussion, we hope to further cultivate and encourage these positive attributes: a strong student network, resilience in the face of uncertainty, and an intimate understanding of the science underlying medicine. While weighing MSTP experiences in COVID-19 clinical practice and research, we also examine ways in which we fell short in our response to the pandemic and discuss innovative ideas to foster connection while practicing safe social distancing as we move into the future.

Early in medical school, MS1s form strong bonds with their medical classmates that often outlast even residency. In addition to these friendships, MSTPs participate in a second community: one among our MSTP as a whole. Building relationships with students across cohorts empowers students to find good labs, living arrangements, and emotional support. Meanwhile, it also provides us with a dynamic network for collaborations, as we quickly proved when asked to recruit additional student volunteers for our respective COVID service-learning projects. Whether in the clinic running trials for antibody tests or in the molecular pathology labs processing patient samples for COVID-19 RNA testing, we found reliable and hard-working team members who quickly committed to volunteering long hours on irregular timetables.

In these uncertain times, the proverb “the chain’s only as strong as its weakest link” feels particularly resonant. Teams have had to rely heavily on one another to safely engage in COVID-19 research and clinical testing. Our classmates not only joined COVID-19 efforts eagerly, they came with diverse and deep skill sets and remained committed even when the work was grueling and unglamorous. This camaraderie left a large impact not only on our perception of our classmates but concretely toward the timely and effective care of patients at Stony Brook Hospital. The worst of the pandemic proved that our MSTP student network is one of our most valuable assets, and we are grateful to all of our classmates for maintaining this inclusive and open community. When called to action by a fellow MSTP, our classmates responded not by asking, “What’s in it for me,” but rather “How can I help?”

The feeling of uncertainty is an inevitable component of graduate school we all wrestle with during our years at the lab bench. In medical school, a strict curriculum with little flexibility is laid out from day one. The agreement is that if you follow the roadmap for four years you will walk across the stage degree in hand. The path for attaining a PhD is far more variable, with some students finishing in two years and others taking closer to six to meet their committee’s requirements. The daily effort expended on a research project, while perhaps loosely correlated to success, does not guarantee a tangible result. We believe this degree of uncertainty — and commitment to values despite uncertainty — that MSTPs negotiate throughout graduate training strengthens us. Graduate school may have inoculated us somewhat against the sheer uncertainty produced by the global pandemic. Though the way forward is not perfectly clear, MSTP students have collectively mustered extraordinary flexibility, inventiveness, and dedication to seeing projects through to the end.

While it might seem obvious, we also believe our strong background in science technique and theory coupled with our medical training made MSTP students hugely valuable in the COVID-19 fight. The projects we joined demanded a high degree of organization and routine communication with faculty and staff throughout the hospital — skills honed by years at the bench, working with PIs and alongside labmates. We could draft and execute protocols for the University Hospital’s clinical diagnostic labs because we easily apprehended both the technical details and application of PCR testing thanks to our extensive wet lab experience. We could staff clinical trials and explain serology testing modalities to patients with confidence because we are trained in bedside manner, abreast on the most current literature on these topics, and even have hands-on experience applying them. Our MD/PhD background allows us to be medical and scientific translators, readily transitioning between two worlds that often don’t interface seamlessly.

Staying connected has been a challenge for us all over the last three months. We are often self-proclaimed introverts, and aspects of quarantine have suited many of us. However for those without roommates or partners, social isolation has also taken a toll. Throughout our time at Stony Brook our directors have developed programing that fosters cohesion from the top down. If we are to avoid erosion to our community it is up to us students to imagine and implement new ways to interact and learn together from a safe social distance. While the faculty deliberate how journal clubs, orientation BBQs, and retreats will look in the fall, students will need to work hard in unofficial capacities to ensure our community stays strong and vibrant and that those who are feeling lonely or sad have a place to turn.

One promising student-led initiative is the newly-established MSTP Diversity and Inclusion Committee (DIC). Committee member John Yuen’s (GS2) piece in this same issue describes the group’s goal to counteract the effects of systemic racial injustice in the program, and one of the major prongs of their action plan is to build a more unified MSTP student body. Student-driven efforts like the DIC’s will be vital toward conserving and strengthening a sense of community in present circumstances. The administration welcomes feedback and ideas from trainees on how we can best support each other despite the isolating and often troubling pandemic conditions.

COVID-19 is here to stay for our foreseeable future. While this is a strange time to be a student, we can find strength in our academic community of peers and faculty. We at the newsletter wish to thank all of our fellow trainees for their positive output and solidarity during this tragic and disruptive time. Congratulations to all those who have defended theses, returned to medical school, submitted grants, survived their first year of the program and learned new skills all during a global pandemic. Our incoming first year students face significant challenges, beginning medical school with an all-remote first semester. We are delighted they have joined our community and are committed to making extra effort to help our MS1s feel engaged. Keep on going, friends, and don’t hesitate to reach out to your community if you need anything.

Lilly Talbot (GS2) is the newly elected MSTP student representative in the medical school curriculum. She studies the mechanism of neurodegeneration in ALS through a process termed the Retrotransposon Storm in Josh Dubnau’s lab.

Nuri Kim (GS4) studies codon usage bias in Mycobacteria in Jessica Seeliger’s lab.