Julia Rinn, International Falls, Minn., one of five from U of M Crookston to take part in IMPACT Program at Mayo Clinic competition

2016 Mar 28

Five University of Minnesota Crookston students recently took part in the IMPACT (Innovative Minds Partnering to Advance Curative Therapies) at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The IMPACT program challenges undergraduate students to form interdisciplinary teams and propose innovative hypotheses to unanswered clinical questions. They chose from three research questions that address the causes of hypoplastic left heart syndrome, bipolar disorder, and ovarian cancer. The third annual IMPACT competition took place on March 5, 2016.

Students competing from the U of M Crookston included Kaycie Hagen,a junior from Savage, Minn.; Maggie Perrel, a junior from New Germany, Minn.; Julia Rinn, a senior from International Falls, Minn.; Kaitlin Sikkink, a freshman from St. Charles, Minn.; and Sierra Trost, a senior from Ham Lake, Minn. The five health science/pre-med majors focused their research submission on the question of the underlying cause of hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The students were mentored by Associate Professor Brian Dingmann who teaches in the biological sciences on the Crookston campus.

All of the undergraduate students who participated in the IMPACT program looked into new developments in regenerative medicine and applied their new awareness to the real life context of solving critical clinical questions. This year's IMPACT program reached out to the 65 colleges and universities across Minnesota that have biology faculty members. Each IMPACT team was invited to submit a poster for presentation at the IMPACT Symposium at Mayo Clinic.

The undergraduate program is sponsored by Regenerative Medicine Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic Office for Applied Scholarship and Education Science. The mission of the IMPACT program is to encourage creative solutions to critical health questions through collaboration between undergraduate students and Mayo Clinic.