First David P. Roye, Jr., MD, Clinical Research Fellowship Recipient Announced
We are proud to announce that Rishi Sinha from UCLA Medical School, is the first David P. Roye, Jr., MD, Clinical Research Fellowship recipient. Rishi is taking a year off between his 3rd and 4th year of medical school to conduct research with the Pediatric Orthopedics team at Columbia University Irving Medical Center from July 2021 through June 2022. This one-year clinical research fellowship is for students interested in pursuing a career in Orthopedic Surgery, and will offer training in clinical research and hands-on collaboration with junior and senior faculty research mentors including orthopedic surgeons and epidemiologists.
"It is an incredible honor to receive the David P. Roye, Jr. MD, Clinical Research Fellowship and to work alongside leaders in pediatric orthopedic surgery. I look forward to a productive year in which I learn how to perform every step of the research process, from patient recruitment to statistical analysis to manuscript preparation. Ultimately, this experience will provide a strong foundation to pursue my career goals of becoming an academic orthopedic surgeon and making valuable contributions to the field," said Rishi Sinha.
After more than forty years of dedication, excellence and loyalty to his patients and the academic community, David P. Roye, MD, retired from Columbia in 2020. Dr. Roye began his career at Columbia in 1980 and since that time has touched countless lives in his role as caregiver, teacher, and mentor. "To honor his incredible legacy at Columbia and in the field of Orthopedic Surgery we have been able to establish the David P. Roye, Jr., MD, Clinical Research Fellowship, focused on advancing education and training in the Division of Pediatric Orthopedics," said Dr. Michael Vitale, Director of the Division of Pediatric Orthopaedics & Spine.
The Columbia research team on average works on over 50 research projects at one time. As one of the new research fellows, Rishi will be involved in 10-15 of those projects and learn the full spectrum of how to accomplish every step of a successful research study.
Unlike other programs, I teach students how to accomplish the full spectrum; appropriately design, research, conduct and analyze our research. The students will be learning how to formulate questions into testable hypotheses to really answer the research questions as well as, interpret the results in the appropriate manner. In addition, they will be learning how to recruit patients, collect and analyze data, write grants/abstracts/manuscripts, and create practice guidelines,” said Senior Staff Associate and Epidemiologist Hiroko Matsumoto, PhD, who runs the clinical research fellowship program.
At end of the year, the fellows can do every aspect of the project and are exposed to a lot of training. Rishi will join the team in researching specific areas of interest including but not limited to:
- Clinical Research: evaluating various surgical and non-surgical techniques to apply innovate approaches to patient care.
- Patient-Based Outcome Research: developing and assessing quality of life and caregiver burden outcome measures reflecting issues of importance to patients and their caregivers.
- Quality and Safety Research: investigating and developing methods in improving the quality and safety of the surgical experience for patients and family members, such as preventing complications post-spine surgery.
“Our mission is to improve pediatric musculoskeletal health through evidence based clinical research. As a renowned research center in Pediatric Orthopaedics, we have an opportunity to spearhead many initiatives to make significant impacts in this field. Rishi will work closely with the research team on a variety of clinical research projects. We are excited to have Rishi on board this year,” said Dr. Matsumoto.