Shady Side Academy senior Talia Busquets is a co-author of the medical research paper Impact of Detecting Occult Pathologic Nodal Disease During Resection for Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma, which was recently published in the academic journal Clinical Lung Cancer.

Busquets worked with Dr. Vivek Verma and Dr. Rodney Wegner in the Radiation Oncology Center at Allegheny General Hospital during the summer of 2019 as part of the Senior School's Summer Research Seminar course. There she analyzed a large data set of patients that suffered from mesothelioma to determine the impact that adequate detection of neoplastic lymph nodes have on the survival of these patients.

The Summer Research Seminar is an upper-level science elective offered to juniors with an interest in participating in authentic science and engineering research. Students complete coursework during their junior year to develop the skills to read scientific papers, build familiarity with laboratory equipment and analysis, and identify a research project to work on over the summer. The following summer, the student is placed in a local university or medical research laboratory and spends approximately 200 hours working alongside professional researchers.

Clinical Lung Cancer is a peer-reviewed bimonthly journal that publishes original articles describing various aspects of clinical and translational research of lung cancer.

Congratulations, Talia!

Read the research paper abstract.