Research
At University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, we have a longitudinal research curriculum that provides residents with both didactic education on clinical research skills and ample time and flexibility to complete meaningful scholarly work. Residents work on their projects throughout their residency and may use elective time in their final years of training to complete their work.
All residents produce and present a scholarly project before the end of residency. These projects include all types of scholarly work, including hypothesis-driven research, robust quality improvement projects, and educational scholarship. To ensure the success of our residents, we provide an annual didactic curriculum that includes topics from all facets of scholarly activity so that residents can take advantage of the information to build their research skills as their projects progress.
Topics:
- Introduction to Scholarly Activities
- Research Study Design
- Institutional Review Board Preparation
- Statistical Analysis
- Scholarship Dissemination – Where and How
In addition to didactic sessions, each resident works with a research mentor from our large, accomplished faculty.
Our curriculum culminates each year with our annual Science Day. This day-long research symposium gives our graduating residents the opportunity to present their work to their faculty and peers. In addition, many of our residents have had the opportunity to share their work at regional and national meetings.
Research Track
Faculty Leads:
For those residents who seek to do robust research with the goal of national dissemination, we recommend joining the Rainbow Residency Research Track. In addition to the research curriculum, Research Track participants have semi-annual meetings with the track leaders to help with finding a research mentor, arranging schedules to maximize protected time for research, and successfully completing and disseminating your project. Participants also meet as a group quarterly to discuss various aspects of the scholarly process at a higher level than the regular curriculum, including the current projects being done by track members, preparing an IRB submission, how to prepare an abstract for submission to national meetings, and building a research career among others.
To receive a certificate of completion of the Research Track, residents must have a resident-as-first-author original research project that is externally disseminated at a regional, national, or international meeting and/or published in an academic journal.
We are proud to share a list of our 2026 Research Track graduates:
Sarah Abdalian, MD
Presentation Title: Bedside Upper Gastrointestinal (BUGI) NICU Studies: How bougie is BUGI, poster presentation at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting
Tyler Langenfeld, MD
Presentation Title: Use of 3D-Printed Models and Augmented Reality in Medical Student Education of Congenital Heart Disease: Randomized Controlled Trial, published in JMIR Medical Education.
Rachel Graf, MD
Presentation Title: Revisiting time to blood culture positivity: can we decrease antibiotic exposure in the NICU?, published in the Journal of Perinatology and presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting
Shradha-Sonia Chhabria, MD
Presentation title: Impact of MRI Body Fat Imaging Report on Obesity-Related Cardiometabolic Risk: Findings From The BODY-REAL Study, A Randomized Controlled Trial, published in Obesity Science & Practice
Presentation title: Cardiometabolic Disease in Obesity-Associated Genetic Syndrome: A Retrospective Epidemiologic Study” presented at Obesity Week 2025
Presentation Title: Use of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists Reduces Risk of Incident Hypertension Among Adolescents with Obesity, presented at Obesity Week 2024.