Doctor, Alumnus Keynotes NHS Undergraduate Research Conference

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APRIL 21, 2017 - A double Georgetown alumnus and physician leader told students at the 2017 Undergraduate Research Conference that their careers might take “unexpected” paths.
Rear Adm. Richard W. Childs (C’87, M’91), MD, an officer in the Commissioned Corps of the United States Public Health Service where he is assistant surgeon general, delivered the keynote address yesterday at the annual event, hosted by the Department of Human Science at the School of Nursing & Health Studies.
Childs – who is also the clinical director of the Division of Intramural Research at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute – discussed his longtime research on kidney cancer and his clinical work in Liberia in 2014 to care for health providers who had been infected with the Ebola virus.
“When I was here as a Georgetown student as an undergrad and in medical school, my interest was primarily in clinical medicine,” he said, noting he could not have predicted his research career at the National Institutes of Health or his deployment to West Africa to help with the Ebola crisis. “You may all think that you kind of know where you are going. But I can tell you: unexpected things can happen.”
‘So Valuable’
The conference, which was founded in 2003 and celebrates undergraduate research and faculty mentorship at Georgetown and on other campuses, spotlights research posters and selected oral presentations. This year, 75 posters were featured from Georgetown, American, George Washington, Howard, James Madison, and Loyola Maryland universities.
Human science major Kayla Schmittau (NHS’17) presented one of those posters, which won a designation for excellence. It detailed her work on Huntington’s disease with mentor Karen E. Anderson, MD, who directs the Huntington Disease Care, Education and Research Center, a combined effort of Georgetown University Medical Center and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.
Schmittau, who is planning a career in medicine, says the experience is allowing her to do clinical ...

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