Michael Makutonin, MD

When I went to my first SAEM conference, I was floored by the number of cool things I could get involved with. That year was a blur – working on talks with the SAEM research committee, designing a machine learning series, and running a Datathon for my peers. I always wondered what could have been possible if I could have gotten involved earlier, without the financial barrier of going to conferences, and benefited from the resources and mentors I ended up finding at SAEM.
Throughout my leadership roles in SAEM and other organizations, I have learned that the most impactful projects are those that give trainees who lack extensive institutional resources full access to SAEM’s network and expertise. When SAEM’s AI Interest Group asked me to lead its first Datathon, we were amazed by the high-quality research our medical students produced after receiving statistics training unavailable at their home schools. As chair of research for EMRA, my team and I doubled the size of the annual Case-Con, transforming it into a signature conference event that showcased a diverse group of trainees from across the country. On the SAEM Research Committee, I helped design design an open-access biostatistics lecture series that has run for more than a year and remains freely available online. These experiences confirmed that simply expanding access to resources we take for granted in academics can create a vibrant community.

Now as a PGY-2 resident at Yale, I am eager to leverage my experiences in emergency medicine and my passion for education to make SAEM a more inclusive, welcoming, and useful organization for all of us. The headwinds that that we face, like AI and workforce challenges, are opportunities in disguise. By building a community of passionate medical students and residents we can move the needle in advancing academic EM. If elected, I will work to ensure that MS1s can find what they are looking for in RAMS as easily as they can sign up for their local EMIG, that students and residents can find mentorship and contribute to projects no matter the resources of their home institutions.