The depth and breadth of research at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) was on display during the 2025 SMHS Research Showcase. The annual event featured more than 300 research abstracts from across GW’s academic medical enterprise—a 10% increase over the previous year—and offered a platform for medical students, residents, Ph.D. candidates and health sciences scholars to share their work in basic sciences, clinical and translational research, public health and medical education.
This year’s showcase on April 30 also marked the invitation of Ph.D. students in biomedical engineering (BME) to stimulate essential collaborations across disciplines.
Highlighting the annual event was a keynote address by Serena S. Spudich, the Gilbert H. Glaser Professor of Neurology and division chief of neurological infections and global neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine.
Alison Hall, senior associate dean for research at SMHS, underscored the importance of fostering a collaborative research culture that bridges disciplines and encourages early-career investigators to explore novel approaches to academic medicine.
“Events like this not only highlight the hard work and innovation happening across our school,” Hall said, “but also reinforce our commitment to training the next generation of researchers.”
Keynote highlights neuro HIV, long COVID
Spudich described her decades of research into how viral infections such as HIV and SARS-CoV-2 affect the brain in her talk titled “A Central Nervous System Tale of Two Viruses: From HIV-1 to SARS-CoV-2.”
“This is a great honor,” Spudich told the audience. “It’s really one of my favorite things to do, to talk to people who are nascent in their careers and thinking about what they’d like to do. I want to excite you about my area of research.”
A renowned neurologist whose clinical practice focuses on infections of the nervous system, Spudich shared insights into the persistence of HIV in the brain and the neurocognitive challenges that remain, even with effective antiretroviral therapies. She also described parallels in her work investigating neurological effects of SARS-CoV-2.
Keynote speaker Serena S. Spudich, the Gilbert H. Glaser Professor of Neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine and division chief of neurological infections and global neurology.
Throughout her discussion, Spudich recalled her own career journey, which she described as unconventional. Inspired early on by her scientist parents, Spudich developed an early passion for neuroscience. She earned a bachelor’s degree in human biology, with a minor in the history of science, then chose to apply to a Ph.D. program in philosophy, studying the history and philosophy of neuroscience.
“I wasn’t one of these people that knew for my whole life that’s what I wanted to do,” she explained. Ultimately, however, Spudich decided to pursue a medical degree because, she said, it afforded her the opportunity to conduct “research and be somebody who’s making a difference in the daily lives of [patients].”
Throughout her career, Spudich has studied the impact of HIV infection on the central nervous system (CNS), particularly neuroinflammation and potential neuronal injury. She discovered that persistent inflammation and potential HIV reservoirs in the brain may contribute to the ongoing cognitive impairment observed in some people living with HIV.
“One of the hallmarks of HIV is that as it replicates, it mutates,” she explained. “You can imagine that because of the way evolutionary forces work, the mutation is related to whatever forces, like immune forces and other forces, are exerted in that environment.”
The CNS provides a distinct environment from the rest of the body, allowing HIV variants to evolve separately. When HIV found in the CNS differs from that in the blood, it indicates local infection of CNS cells rather than virus simply entering from the bloodstream.
“This,” Spudich explained, “has become a very important topic for HIV cure research because people are focusing on trying to eradicate the virus from body reservoirs.”
During the showcase, winners were announced in Integrated Biomedical Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, M.D. research and Health Sciences. Read a full list of award winners.