A love for pickleball turned UCF medical student Isaac Soloveychik into a medical researcher who discovered that physical activity outdoors improves mental health more than exercising inside.

Soloveychik was one of 120 future physician Knights who presented their research at the 2025 FIRE (Focused Individualized Research Experience) conference. UCF is one of the few medical schools in the nation that requires all students to do a two-year scientific research project. The goal, says Deborah German, vice president for health affairs and dean, is to create doctors who have a “spirit of inquiry” that is always looking to advance medical knowledge.

“Research is the currency of progress,” she says.

The conference featured poster and oral presentations on a variety of topics, such as using AI to better diagnose and manage diseases, improving critical reasoning in medical students, and ways to improve care for patients with conditions including cancer, schizophrenia, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea and high blood pressure. Because of the FIRE course and the college’s research focus, many UCF medical students present and publish their scientific discoveries before ever graduating from medical school.

Outdoor Exercise and Positive Mental Health

Soloveychik says he became interested in exercise and mental health when his parents moved to Village Walk in Lake Nona and his dad became “obsessed” with pickleball. The two play often and he wondered, did group activities provide more mental health benefits than exercising alone because of the social connections involved? So he analyzed data from the Lake Nona Life Project — an extensive health survey of people who live, work and engage in activities in Lake Nona. The scientific project, led by Eric Schrimshaw, chair of population health sciences at the College of Medicine, in collaboration with the Lake Nona Institute, is designed to identify community health needs and offer solutions to make Lake Nona healthier. Participants answer survey questions about their health, including how much and where they exercise, their social interactions, work habits and levels of depression and anxiety.

Soloveychik analyzed survey data from more than 350 participants and found that while group exercise was not associated with reduced depression as originally expected, outdoor activities — whether done in groups or individually — were positive for mental health.

“Getting outside, a change of scenery, being in the sun and listening to the birds provides mental health benefits,” he says. Unsurprisingly, those who reported no exercise of any kind reported greater depression.

Starlla Dabady hopes to become an OB/GYN and her FIRE project focused on her passion for improving the health of mothers and babies. She studied a new program at Orlando Health that focused on improving outcomes for 25,000 patients at risk for serious pregnancy-related complications. Orlando Health provided telehealth, nurse navigators and a midwife mobile clinic that provided ultrasound and other services at the patient’s home. It gave mothers at-home blood pressure and blood sugar monitors to better manage their chronic health problems. Dabady spent the summer between her first and second year of medical school working with the program, where she saw its impact firsthand.

“Research is important because you want to prove that what you’re doing is having an impact,” she says. “Research helps us strengthen what we are doing and improve our services. When I was working with the program I could see how I helped one patient. With research, I could see the impact we had on so many.”

Student, Researcher Connect Through Science

Aaron Geril came to UCF’s medical school with a dream to fight cancer, a disease that has affected members of his family. At a mentor fair designed to link students with potential FIRE advisors, he met Otto Phanstiel, a UCF medicinal chemist who has dedicated his career to finding a cure for pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of the disease. The two connected over science. Geril’s FIRE project focused on developing inhibitors to a protein that is a master regulator of cancer cell growth signaling pathways. The goal — stop the signaling and stop cancer’s ability to grow and spread.

He says his research project gave him the opportunity to “go behind the scenes and see how medical discoveries are actually made.”

Lindsey Ammann worked with physicians at Nemours Children’s Health in Orlando and Delaware to study whether children who are treated with a high-flow nasal cannula for bronchiolitis have an increased risk for asthma later in childhood. The cannula is commonly used for severe bronchiolitis, especially when children require hospitalization. She studied 4,736 children who went to the hospital system’s emergency room with bronchiolitis between 2015 and 2023 and found those treated with the cannula had a 10% higher chance of getting asthma. She said she hopes the findings will lead to more research and systems for following children more closely after they have high-flow nasal cannulas.

How Research Experience Creates Better Doctors

Robert Hines, a College of Medicine Population Health Sciences professor and researcher, is co-director of the FIRE course. He says the two-year research experience helps medical students develop curiosity, critical thinking and resilience — in addition to honing their scientific presentation skills.

“With the pace that medicine is advancing today, future physicians must be able to understand and evaluate medical research to practice evidence-based medicine,” he says.

Lane Coffee, the FIRE course’s other co-director, is a nationally recognized leader in collaborative and team science, particularly with the National Institutes of Health. He came to the medical school to advance clinical and translational research and has now helped start the FIRE+ (Plus) program, that will encourage M.D. candidates to continue their research through all four years of training.

“Research is critically important to move science forward and to improve patient care,” he says. “Medical students who conduct research gain an appreciation for, and an understanding of, the importance of scientific discovery and the methodology and processes that encompass it. These skills will be vitally important as they begin to practice medicine and all along their careers.”

Students and faculty members judged all of the research presentations. Here are their awardees:

Student Selected Best Poster Presentation
First – Suvleen Singh
Second – Manasa Satyajit
Third – Matthew Vaccaro

Faculty Selected Best Poster Presentation
First – Lindsey Ammann
Second – Nicole Miralles Muia
Third – Andrew Willmer

Student Selected Best Oral Presentation
First  – Kennie Brandt
Second – Jeremy Sheiber
Third – Pascal Escobar

Faculty Selected Best Oral Presentation
First – Kennie Brandt
Second – Jeremy Sheiber
Third – Katrina Russell