Hey everyone! My name is Daniel Kurtz, and I am one of the 2nd year MD/PhD students. I am running to be reelected to the VP MD/PhD role to give students in the MD/PhD program a voice in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. As the liaison between the faculty and the MD/PhD students, I want to continue advocating for your concerns to ASoc, the Faculty, and the Canadian scientific community. Following up on my work from this past year, I will be your guide and resource for all things MD/PhD-related at uOttawa, and work with my peers to solve pressing issues in healthcare-related research. With the new change to the MD/PhD program format starting this September, I plan to connect incoming students with those currently completing their MD/PhD degrees for advice and mentorship. I also want to continue holding fun events for MD/PhD students and CIP residents to blow off steam, connect and meet other trainees. Whether grabbing food, skating on the canal, or playing sports, we will have a blast! As the uOttawa student representative for the Clinician Investigator Trainee Association of Canada and through the VP MD/PhD role in ASoc, I hope to push for increased faculty support for your research and give all uOttawa MD students greater access to research opportunities. For example, finding a professor to do research with is a difficult slog requiring way too many emails and broken websites. I hope to be your resource for any research-related questions so you can find the research supervisor (and project) of your dreams! uOttawa also has numerous websites, portals, and other sources of information for research grants and applications, making it challenging to figure out research funding. While I have successfully advocated to the Faculty of Medicine over the past year to improve their website and make resources more available, more work can be done to make our school's resources easier to access. Furthermore, I want to organize workshops for students which discuss grant applications and other aspects of research to reduce barriers to starting new projects. If I am reelected as VP for MD/PhD, I will strive to address your concerns, research-related or otherwise, and work to increase accessibility to research at uOttawa. Last year, Maclean’s University Rankings ranked uOttawa as the 5th best medical school in Canada, a big part of which was due to the worldwide impact of our research. Let’s reach even higher!