AMA Foundation Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarship
| Issue Date: | December 9, 2022 |
| Applications Due: | February 28, 2023 |
| Scholarship Selection Notification: | By June 2023 |
| Scholarship Amount: | $10,000 |
The AASM Foundation has partnered with the American Medical Association (AMA) Foundation to fund a scholarship that is being administered by the AMA Foundation’s Physicians of Tomorrow program. For the 2023 year, four $10,000 scholarships will be provided to medical students who are interested in pursuing a career in sleep medicine, maintains academic excellence and demonstrates a financial need.
For medical students interested in sleep medicine and looking to learn more about the AMA Foundation’s Physicians of Tomorrow scholarship, funded by the AASM Foundation, visit: https://amafoundation.org/programs/scholarships/
Meet the 2022 Scholarship Recipients
Jacob Bentley
University of Central Florida College of Medicine
Jacob Bentley is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Central Florida (UCF) College of Medicine with a passion for research and service that he hopes will continue to shape his career as a physician. He was one of three student presenters nominated for a highly competitive poster presentation award at the 2021 International Association of Medical Science Educators Annual Conference for his research conducted on preclinical opioid and pain management curriculum at UCF Medicine. He has also developed an interest in sleep medicine and is currently working on a device and method for non-pharmacological sleep architecture optimization, which he hopes will have wide-reaching effects. He serves his community as an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and has also volunteered for many years at the St. Thomas Aquinas Medical Clinic, which provides free healthcare to local uninsured individuals. He served as a student ambassador for the Interfaith Youth Core Faith in the Vaccine Project by working with a team to plan and implement accessibility and trust-building projects in local high-need communities to promote the COVD-19 vaccine and combat vaccine hesitancy. He enjoys spending time with his wife, Jessica, and two sons, Taft and Wells.
Thomas Gossard
Creighton University School of Medicine
Thomas Gossard is a fourth-year medical student who is seeking to pursue a career in neurology with particular focus on sleep medicine. His interests include the impact of sleep on normal aging, as well as the role sleep plays in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Thomas has been involved in several research projects involving REM sleep behavior disorder and obstructive sleep apnea at the Mayo Clinic. He is currently completing a research year at the National Institutes of Health as part of the Medical Scholars Research Program. His interests outside of medicine include running, playing basketball and golf, and trying new food.
Marc Perlman
Albany Medical College
Marc Perlman is a fourth-year medical student at Albany Medical College pursuing a career in internal medicine with a focus on the application of lifestyle-based treatment to the prevention and management of chronic disease. His interests include narrative medicine, digital health and functional medicine. Marc recently completed his thesis for his medical degree with distinction in health systems analysis, exploring the implicit biases behind how those with chronic pain make decisions relating to risk and time. In addition, Marc serves as research lead for a health tech startup that provides personalized audio therapy for cancer patients. Outside of the clinic, Marc enjoys writing poetry that celebrates the often-underappreciated aspects of the medical world.
Sophia Schneider
Harvard University Medical School
Sophia is a fourth-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. She attended the University of Colorado Boulder, where her interest in sleep medicine was first cultivated through her involvement in the Sleep and Development Laboratory. She studied sleep and emotion regulation across early childhood and ultimately earned a master’s in integrative physiology. In medical school, Sophia has continued to pursue sleep research by designing an original investigation of chronopharmacology and time-of-day recommendations in outpatient hospital pharmacies. She intends to apply for an internal medicine residency position, through which she aims to expand the application of circadian rhythms in clinical settings with innovative research and education projects—both in academic settings as well as at the patient bedside.
Past Scholarship Recipients
John Feemster
Medical College of Wisconsin
My interest in medicine started during my undergraduate college experience at St. Olaf College where I studied Chemistry. During the summer after my junior year, I was selected to work as a research assistant for the Mayo Clinic Sleep Behavior and Neurophysiology Research Laboratory with my mentor, Dr. Erik St. Louis. Our research involved studying the clinical presentation and prognosis of patients with rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder. This research opened my eyes to the exciting opportunities within neurology and sleep medicine. After several years of clinical research, I matriculated at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Central Wisconsin campus where I am currently in my final year. Volunteer work and community outreach has been a crucial part of my medical education, which led me to work with our local hospital as a volunteer in the palliative care unit and serve as the medical student representative of the Marathon County Medical Society within the Wisconsin Medical Society. Throughout medical school I have strengthened my interest in neurology and sleep medicine, which has ultimately led me to pursue a neurology residency position in 2022. I am excited for the next steps in my career and thankful for everyone who has helped me get to this point.