Meet AACOM's 2026 Research Grant Awardees

AI tools can help COMs adopt precision education, promising tailored teaching and assessment for each learner. The harder question, Leslie Wimsatt, PhD, argues, is whether a given school is actually built to use them.

Her project seeks to map what readiness for personalized education really requires and better understand what factors and designs improve AI adoption in diverse medical education settings. At Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine, she is leading a comparison of four schools of different sizes and means, two osteopathic and two allopathic, to determine what it really takes to implement AI-enabled learning and assessment. 

Through document reviews and interviews with leaders and staff, the researchers will examine how factors such as governance, culture, staffing and data maturity shape readiness. These findings can help schools with different resources plan their next steps to thoughtfully and effectively integrate AI tools. 

Developing a Bilingual CPR Instructor Pipeline to Strengthen Rural Emergency Preparedness 

In the fields around Colquitt County, Georgia, the farmworkers who pick the produce largely speak Spanish. A local health assessment found most of these workers carry the risk factors for cardiac arrest and are less likely to receive life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).  

Stacie Fairley, PhD, at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine South Georgia hopes to reduce this tendency by preparing more people to teach and learn CPR. Last year, her team created a bilingual CPR education course for farmworkers. They engaged bilingual medical students from the Latino Medical Student Association, supervised by faculty, to teach CPR in Spanish to 40 farmworkers. On a short test afterward, the group's mean knowledge scores rose from 50 percent to 91 percent. 

With AACOM funding, the project team will support bilingual residents and osteopathic medical students in earning nationally recognized instructor certifications and training farmworkers and their supervisors in Spanish, aiming to reach at least 100 workers and certify 20 on-site supervisors in CPR, first aid and automated external defibrillator use. 

Researchers will assess knowledge, practical skills and willingness to respond to emergencies, while examining what medical students learn about communication and community needs. With this work the team hopes to expand the local capacity for continued Spanish-language CPR training in their region. 

Impact of a Student-as-Teacher, Case-Based Clinical Teaching Model on Preclinical Osteopathic Medical Student Learning and Community Engagement 

Carolina Restini, PharmD, PhD, of Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine is testing an old idea with new rigor: that the surest way to master something is to teach it. Her work will engage preclinical students in preparing and delivering lessons that connect foundational biomedical science with clinical cases and osteopathic principles for high school biology students.  

She'll work to compare participants' performance with that of students who do not join the program and examine their teaching confidence and communication. The study will also assess high school students’ learning and interest in healthcare careers, exploring how one partnership can serve learners at different stages. 

An early run of the model has already drawn strong student engagement, and AACOM funding allows it to be put to a formal test to deepen our understanding of how physicians learn and the experiences that shape young learners' interest in medicine. Restini hopes this work will both strengthen the pathway to practice for learners with limited access to healthcare role models and help them cultivate an appreciation for osteopathic-centered medicine. 

Integration of Lifestyle Medicine Education (Sleep, Nutrition, and Physical Activity) into an Osteopathic Medical School Curriculum: A Course Design with Multi-Dimensional Outcomes Assessment 

Chronic disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and much of it traces back to how people sleep, eat and move. Yet medical schools under-emphasize foundational lifestyle factors behind health. 

Andrew Payne, PhD, of Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine means to close the training gap with a new one-credit elective that helps learners understand the science of prevention that osteopathic medicine has long valued.  

The projected 40-hour elective will focus on sleep, nutrition and physical activity for second- and third-year students. Students will learn basic pillars of physiology along with practical counseling and treatment planning. To evaluate knowledge retention among students, Payne will use board-style questions, simulated patient encounters, and follow-up testing at three to six months. Practicing physicians in the community will also be surveyed on their own experiences with how they apply sleep, nutrition and physical activity education. 

Through this work, Payne hopes to scale lifestyle competencies into core curricula for osteopathic medical students and reinforce the focus on preventive medicine that shapes the profession. 

Optimizing AI-Enhanced Learning in Osteopathic Medical Education: A Kirkpatrick-Evaluated Framework to Preserve Critical Thinking While Scaling Access 

In a recent experiment, university students who leaned on a chatbot wrote better essays than their peers but remembered no more of the material when they were tested on something new. Researchers have a name for it: "metacognitive laziness."  

Jeffery Powers, PhD, of Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine wants to help cultivate and sharpen the necessary clinical reasoning and AI skills physicians need to diagnose and treat. This AACOM-funded project will test whether faculty-built AI Socratic tutors, paired with explicit training in how to think will help preserve the critical thinking that diagnosis depends on. 

In his team's fall 2025 pilot with 58 biochemistry students, those using a faculty-built AI tutor earned about two-thirds fewer D and F grades than classmates who didn't use it and twice the share of A’s. Researchers also saw that the gap between the strongest and weakest students narrowed. 

Powers' AACOM grant supports scaling that pilot to pair faculty-curated AI tutors with workshops that teach students to frame useful questions, check AI responses against course materials and prompt students to explain their reasoning as they work through a problem. His work will give educators evidence that can be used to build AI into learning while preserving the intellectual work that prepares learners for clinical decisions. 

Rural Practitioner Perspectives on AI Models: Aligning Urban-Centric Development with Rural Needs 

Clinical AI is often trained on data derived from traditional, urban care settings and can misfire in rural areas where patient populations, community needs, resources and workflows may differ. 

Machelle Linsenmeyer, EdD, of the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, wants to better understand what it takes to care for patients in rural communities. Her team's study asks rural practitioners themselves how they use AI, what current tools overlook, what they distrust about it and what bias they see, especially in osteopathic care.  

Linsenmeyer will survey clinical preceptors and hold focus groups with rural practitioners to inform recommendations that reflect rural practice and osteopathic care. Along with her co-investigators, from Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine and Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine, she plans to travel hundreds of miles to reach clinics in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Idaho where broadband may restrict virtual participation to gather these insights. 

Her recommendations aim to shape AI tools that reflect rural and osteopathic practice and work to keep the rural-urban health gap from widening as AI spreads. 

The Anato-Bee: Early Pathway to Inspire College and Career Opportunities in Medicine (EPIC-COM) 

To address the national shortage of physicians, Mary Piscura, PhD, of Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine–Auburn, conceived an idea to provide early hands-on experience to young people interested in healthcare and measure if this exposure actually shaped their intent to pursue a medical career. 

Piscura co-created Anato-Bee, a competition that introduces high school students to anatomical sciences. The format is borrowed from a spelling bee, but the aim is bigger: to let teenagers who might never have pictured themselves in medicine try it on for size, especially for students with little access to such programs. Since 2023, nearly 2,000 students have registered for Anato-Bee. 

She and her team will examine the Anato-Bee pathway program, including mentorship and summer science experiences, through surveys and interviews. Researchers will study motivation, hope, belonging and interest in teens' healthcare careers.  

The Anato-Bee is already encouraging young people to engage with medical concepts and Piscura's work will help educators understand what turns early interest into a lasting path toward medicine. 

Using Virtual Reality to Support Student Learning of Medical Physiology 

Nova Southeastern University Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine's Imaan Benmerzouga, PhD, envisions a medical education that allows students to go beyond their 2D textbook and step into an immersive, simulated clinical environment. 

After piloting one VR session in medical physiology in 2023 and publishing the results, her team built four, one for each block of the first-year course: the autonomic nervous system, heart failure, obesity hypoventilation syndrome and diabetic ketoacidosis. When all four were implemented in fall 2025, students reached or came close to the team’s 75 percent target on related exam questions for the first two sessions but fell short on the last two. 

Her AACOM-funded study aims to learn why. Across two cohorts, her team will track exam performance tied to each session and survey 200 students on how VR fits into their learning, helping educators identify which concepts VR teaches best and how to build it into the basic sciences. 

As this work scales, medical education will have access to these engaging lessons that allow students to see and interact with physiology they could otherwise only imagine.  

The 2026 winners have until July 31, 2028, to complete their work under the published program timeline. Their studies are designed to produce findings that other educators can examine, adapt and build on. You can explore the full list of projects and investigators on AACOM’s Research Grant Awardees page. 

Note: To be eligible for AACOM's Grant Research program, principal investigators must be affiliated with an accredited or pre-accredited U.S. college of osteopathic medicine that is an AACOM member. Developing colleges in AACOM's consulting programs are also eligible. Learn more about the Annual Research Grant Program or contact learningsupport@aacom.org.