Winners of best poster presentation award at EnVision Summit 2025

At the EnVision Summit 2025, medical students were given awards for best poster presentation. In exclusive interviews, they spoke with Ophthalmology Times about their award-winning posters and research.

Editors Note: The fifth winner, Angela Piccini, was not available for interview.

Chloe Shields, a medical student at the University of Miami, presented research on the role of serological status in dry eye associated with Sjögren's disease. She explained that her team used the Sjögren's International Collaborative Clinical Alliance cohort to investigate whether SSA positivity and immunoglobulin levels could predict the signs and symptoms seen in patients. Their preliminary findings suggested that SSA positivity and higher immunoglobulin levels were associated with more signs but less symptom burden, compared to SSA negativity and lower immunoglobulin levels. Shields noted that future research would aim to compare ocular findings, particularly corneal nerves, to the clinical observations.

Daniel Arreaza-Kaufman, the current glaucoma fellow at the Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute, shared the results of his award-winning research on GATT surgery in patients with pseudoexfoliation. He described a case series review of 11 patients who underwent GATT at the Cleveland Clinic, focusing on long-term follow-up over 5 years. The results showed a significant reduction in IOP and medication use, with 72% of patients qualifying as surgical successes. Arreaza-Kaufman emphasized the need for more long-term follow-up and comparisons to traditional glaucoma surgeries, especially in secondary open-angle glaucoma.

Wendy Li, a medical student at the University of Miami conducting research at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, presented her work on developing a novel tear assay to differentiate ocular surface squamous neoplasia (OSSN) from pterygia. Li explained that the study evaluated three groups: those with biopsy-proven OSSN, biopsy-proven pterygia, and those without ocular surface lesions. Bioanalysis revealed that microRNAs were abundant and stable in patient tears, and 15 microRNA markers were significantly expressed. A multivariate analysis of four consistent biomarkers demonstrated excellent diagnostic power in distinguishing OSSN from pterygia. Li believed this assay could be particularly useful in primary care settings to promptly refer patients to ocular surface oncologists.

Osmel Alvarez, a fourth-year medical student at Duke University, discussed his project on an AI algorithm to diagnose OSSN from slit lamp photographs. The algorithm was trained on slit lamp images from patients with biopsy-proven OSSN and pterygia, and it achieved a 90% accuracy in differentiating the two conditions. In comparison, four human graders had a significantly lower accuracy of only 54%. Alvarez envisioned this AI tool being valuable in diagnostic settings, especially where there is a lack of experienced ocular surface oncologists, allowing for quick and accurate diagnosis from photographs.