UAB medical student Amaris Elston will receive a Student Diversity Travel Award from the Association for Academic Surgery to attend next year’s Academic Surgical Congress.

Amaris Elston

Elston will be recognized with a certificate for the award at the AAS Awards ceremony during the ASC, which will be held Feb. 4-6, 2020, in Orlando, Florida. The award includes a $500 travel stipend, hotel accommodations and one year of complementary AAS membership.

Elston is part of the Department of Surgery’s Short-Term Research Experiences Advancing Medical Students program, which is supported by a training grant from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases under award number T35DK116670.

Through the STREAMS program, Elston received mentored research training from UAB transplant surgeon Jayme Locke, M.D., MPH, who serves as the director of the UAB Comprehensive Transplant Institute. Prior to her STREAMS training, Elston became a transplant patient herself after donating a kidney to her sister during her first year of medical school.