A team of fellows in our Gastroenterology and Hepatology Fellowship Program took third place in “GI Jeopardy” last month at the annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) in Orlando. Each year, the ACG hosts a knowledge-bowl-type competition among the 135 national GI fellowship programs. After an initial online competition, the Iowa GI fellows placed high enough to receive the opportunity to compete in person against the other top-five finalists: University of California Medical Center (San Francisco), Indiana University School of Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Medicine, and Duke University. After the first round, the UI fellows were in first, but ultimately fell behind UCSF and Indiana. Congratulations to the GI Fellows team, Dr. Kartik Soota and Dr. Jagpal Klair.

The GI Fellows also submitted and presented more than 10 posters to the ACG conference. Dr. Rahman Nakshabendi and Dr. Maen Masadeh received the Presidential Poster Award for their submission, “Recurrent hematemesis acute anemia may not always be secondary to GI blood loss.” Congratulations to them and to their faculty co-authors, Dr. Judith Assouline-Dayan and Dr. Mariam Naveed. Each year, fewer than 5% of accepted abstracts receive this distinction for “high quality, novel, unique, and interesting research.” Way to go on the national stage, GI Fellows!

The fellows’ travel expenses to the conference were sponsored by the Bruce L. Miller and M. Joyce Miller Memorial Award. We are grateful for the philanthropic support.

UPDATE: On Twitter, the ACG sent us a couple pictures of Drs. Soota and Klair deep in thought and consultation.