The MSTP community is back safer and stronger. The last months have been a challenge to all of us: our MS1 class started medical school completely online and joined the rest of the students for all online events; political tensions were running high across the country; communities were suffering from hate crimes. All on top of the Covid19 pandemic.

While not all wounds are yet healed, there has been tremendous progress: All of our faculty, students and staff have had the opportunity to become vaccinated; we will bid farewell to our graduating class at the graduation dinner in May and all classes for the fall are to take place in person. With departures of the senior students comes recruitment of a new class. Despite the challenges of virtual interviews, we have a great prospective class from our pool of more than 300 applicants and were immensely pleased that we were able to pull off in-person second-look days here this past month, which to our knowledge virtually no other program in the country did.

Our students have shown amazing resilience while achieving high academic honors, publishing outstanding research, and strengthening our community. To recognize their contributions and to support their initiatives in promoting diversity and social justice, we have established the MSTP fund for excellence. We are very grateful for the incredibly generous donations from current and former students, family, friends, staff and faculty. The ability to build this community in the current environment means a lot to our program.

Many thanks to the students who have made this newsletter possible: Lillian, Nuri, Allen and Tyler.

Lastly, please mark your calendars – this year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the MD/PhD training program at Stony Brook with a dedicated retreat in the fall. We hope to see many of you there.

Interview with Stony Brook University President, Dr. Maurie McInnis

We are very excited that the new university president, Dr. McInnis, has taken time out of her busy schedule to talk to (by Nuri Kim and Lillian Talbot).

Suppose They gave Your First Semester in Medical School and Everybody Attended Remotely.

Meet our entering class of 2020 who came from near and far to attend the first semester of medical school remotely (by Allen Chen).

Editorial: MSTP Giving Day – Why Give?

The MSTP is participating for the first time in Giving Day, raising funds to recognize our outstanding students and their initiatives (by Lillian Talbot).

Alumna Portrait: Catherine Salussolia, MD, PhD 

Dr. Salussolia is sharing with us her experiences navigating the physician-scientist career path in the field of pediatrics and child neurology (by Dr. Tyler Guinn).

GS1 put together a terrific schedule for JC/CPC and CSD

Our GS1 students arranged a tremendous series of speakers reflecting the breaths of topics that 2020 offered from COVID-19 to Institutional Racism (by Nuri Kim).

Opinion: Thoughts on Navigating Third Year of Medical School.

Marathon runner Tyler Guinn paces you through his experiences in a pandemic MS3 (by Dr. Tyler Guinn)