{"id":182334,"date":"2026-04-01T16:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/182334\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T16:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T16:53:10","slug":"student-wins-best-presentation-in-puerto-rico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/182334\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Wins Best Presentation in Puerto Rico"},"content":{"rendered":"

For five days in February, third-year student Talia Lilikakis was among several students who traveled to Puerto Rico with Assistant Professor of Psychology and Counseling Robert Alexander, Ph.D.<\/a>, for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Thoracic Radiology<\/a>. There, Lilikakis earned an award for Best Student Oral Scientific Presentation.<\/p>\n

\"TaliaTalia Lilikakis presents her research, \u201cNodules on CT: Factors Leading to Detection Errors,\u201d at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Thoracic Radiology.<\/p>\n

During the conference\u2019s third day, Lilikakis, an undergraduate student in the life sciences\/ osteopathic medicine<\/a> (B.S.\/D.O.) program, presented her research, \u201cNodules on CT: Factors Leading to Detection Errors,\u201d based on her work with Alexander and radiologists. Her presentation centered on the reasons why radiologists miss pulmonary nodules on CT scans. The study aims to raise awareness of those reasons to help prevent future errors through methods such as a systematic approach and review of challenging areas in an image.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like a part of the scientific community and proud to know that real clinicians were listening to my work and valued what I had to say,\u201d she says. \u201cMy work might help radiologists become aware of potential challenges and help them adopt strategies that could improve their accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working in the Lab<\/p>\n

When she wasn\u2019t prepping for her presentation, Lilikakis worked with her peers from Alexander\u2019s Human Factors and Neuroscience<\/a> (HFAN) research lab, Audrie Saad, Jana Radwan, and Ayesha Mulla<\/a>, conducting hands-on data collection as part of a National Institutes of Health grant Alexander received<\/a> in 2025. The four-year award supports eye movement research that examines how radiologists interact with data from artificial intelligence (AI) tools and addresses a leading cause of medical error\u2014missed detections in radiology. At the Puerto Rico conference, the group of students set up an eye tracker and recruited participants to collect data on site.<\/p>\n

\"TaliaLife sciences\/osteopathic medicine (B.S.\/D.O.) student Talia Lilikakis (left) works in Robert Alexander\u2019s Human Factors and Neuroscience research lab.<\/p>\n

Lilikakis is an HFAN lab research coordinator on the New York City campus, managing scheduling and communication of HFAN lab participants and student research assistants, as well as mentoring two fellow pre-medical students. These responsibilities are in addition to several ongoing lab research projects, but she handles them all with passion and enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect that Talia will have her name on more than four papers over the next few years,\u201d Alexander says. \u201cShe has been extremely productive, and I\u2019m very proud of her for the work she\u2019s been doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Lilikakis is part of an HFAN lab experiment investigating whether providing cues before a chest X-ray image can assist in diagnosing pulmonary nodules. Using some information from the students\u2019 eye-tracking data collection during the Puerto Rico conference, this experiment\u2019s results can help radiologists understand how to best use AI as a preliminary screening tool before reading images. If AI\u2019s cues improve radiologists\u2019 diagnostic accuracy, then AI can serve as an effective first-screening tool to guide radiologists on where to find abnormalities in an image.<\/p>\n

Lilikakis is also contributing to several literature reviews in the lab, including one examining relationships between fixational eye movements in patients with ADHD and another on Parkinson\u2019s disease and fixational eye movements.<\/p>\n

While she helps draft the manuscript for the Parkinson\u2019s review paper, Lilikakis \u201ceffectively \u2018owns\u2019 the ADHD project,\u201d Alexander explains. \u201cShe has the authority to make decisions about our day-to-day activities related to this ADHD paper and is guiding the other students in conducting the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

As her third undergraduate year wraps up before shifting to study at the College of Osteopathic Medicine<\/a>, Lilikakis is excited to begin her medical studies in the fall. She plans to pursue either neurology or radiology when she enters residency training, but she is keeping an open mind should another specialty pique her interest. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy time at the conference in Puerto Rico is one of my most memorable experiences ever, and I look forward to indulging in my passion for medicine both academically and professionally,\u201d she says. \u201cI look forward to starting medical school and gaining new experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For five days in February, third-year student Talia Lilikakis was among several students who traveled to Puerto Rico…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[73486,73484,73485,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-182334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-biological-chemical-sciences","9":"tag-department-of-biological-chemical-sciences","10":"tag-life-sciences-osteopathic-medicine","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-city-news","15":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}