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The Daniel Lewis Ravin, MD Award honors MD students and PhD candidates enrolled in the School of Medicine at ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ who show promise in the fields of occupational or environmental health. The 2023 - 2024 award winners are Lauren Fane and Connor Riegal. Read more about them below!
Lauren Fane
Lauren is currently an MD student at the ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ School of Medicine and plans to graduate in 2025.
Tell us about yourself:
I am from Michigan, went to the University of Michigan, and majored in biomedical engineering. My hobby is Ballroom/Latin dancing - the ballroom dance team community and competitions are just what I needed for breaks from school work. When I started seeing medical procedures and surgeries that involve radiation and wearing heavy, protective lead coats, I grew curious about radiation safety in healthcare. Since I knew Dr. Mulloy from her occupational safety lectures to my med school class, I asked her about my radiation safety concern, and our conversation sparked my idea to conduct research on this topic.
What excites you about the Daniel Lewis Ravin Award?
I'm excited that Case Western has an award that encourages medical students to dive into occupational and environmental health, which is rarely discussed in medical school. My radiation safety passion falls under occupational health, and I'm also very interested in learning about the impact of the significant medical waste healthcare facilities produce and the vast resources they consume.
How do you plan to use this award?
I plan to finish my radiation safety research project and share my findings with the community through publishing and conferences. In parallel, I want to learn about innovative strategies to reduce healthcare waste that I can work to implement in my future work environments.
Connor Riegal
Connor is an MD student at the ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ School of Medicine and plans to graduate in 2026.
Tell us about yourself:
My name is Connor Riegal, and I am from Southeast Michigan. I went to undergrad at Michigan State University and now attend the School of Medicine at Case. Before coming to medical school, I worked on a regenerative farm in Maui, HI, and discovered my passion for food as medicine. That experience became the backbone for what I want to accomplish in medicine: changing how we think about chronic disease, metabolic health, and preventive medicine.
What excites you about the Daniel Lewis Ravin Award?
I am excited to use the award to gain more knowledge that there isn't time to cover deeply in medical school. Through the award, I was able to attend a three day culinary medicine intensive at the Chef's Garden in OH which provided a wealth of knowledge and connections.
How do you plan to use this award?
My plans for the award year are to build out resources in and around Case based around food as medicine. One of these will be an elective for medical students to dive into the effects of nutrition on health from soil to table. The other will be working with Metro Health on a food as medicine program and hopeful integration of a Teaching Kitchen. I hope to learn and experience as much as I can!