Who are … the CHEST Challenge finalists?

It’s time to meet our competing finalists for CHEST Challenge at CHEST 2018! Fellows from many training programs took part in an online game earlier this year. The top three teams will play a Jeopardy! -style format live game show at the CHEST Annual Meeting.


This year, the championship will be held on Tuesday at 6:30pm at the Marriott Riverwalk Alamo Ballroom A-D, in conjunction with the NetWork Trainee Mixer .

Cleveland Clinic – Cleveland, OH

Team: PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Alveoli)
Team Members: Gretchen Winter, MD; Jorge Morales-Estrella, MD; Apostolos Perelas, MD
Program Director: Rendell Ashton, MD, FCCP


How did you prepare for this year’s CHEST Challenge finals? How many hours did you spend studying? Reading, practice questions, journal review, and prep sessions: 10-20 a week.

Who do you think is your biggest competitor? Ourselves

If you could choose a team mascot, what would it be? Dolphins

If you could choose a team uniform, what would it be? Samurai armor

What is your team cheer or theme song? “We Will Rock You” by Queen

If you win, how will you celebrate? Donuts and a lot of pizza

Emory University
 – Atlanta, GA

Team: The Solitary Nodules
Team Members: Matthew Schimmel, MD; Mohleen Kang, MD; Haider Ali, MD
Program Director: David Schulman, MD, MPH, FCCP


How did you prepare for this year’s CHEST Challenge finals? How many hours did you spend studying? Two hours of mindfulness meditation every day since July

Who do you think is your biggest competitor? Michigan, since LeBron left Cleveland

If you could choose a team mascot, what would it be? A giant Shrek soft toy wearing sleeveless scrubs, which always carries a working EBUS scope

If you could choose a team uniform, what would it be? Overalls! Ghostbusters style or sterile rompers

What is your team cheer or theme song? “Theme from Mission: Impossible” by Lalo Schifrin

If you win, how will you celebrate? We plan to hire a crop-duster and spray vintage Dom Perignon Champagne over the cities of Cleveland and Ann Arbor.

Michigan Medicine – 
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Team: Breaths Per Minute
Team Members: Bonnie Wang, Patrick Bradley, Matt Hensley
Program Director: Kevin Chan, MD, FCCP


How did you prepare for this year’s CHEST Challenge finals? How many hours did you spend studying? We prepared by building team unity and studying over happy hours. We met our goal as long as we completed more CHEST SEEK questions than drinks.

Who do you think is your biggest competitor? This is a difficult question to answer as both of the other finalists are surely going to be tough competitors. But if we have to choose, it would be Emory for three reasons. 1) They stole Sanjay Gupta from Michigan, 2) Casey Cable, one of the fellows, was the only person to find an old copy of CHEST, succeeding at the one challenge we couldn’t complete, and 3) David Schulman, program director at Emory and CHEST 2018 Program Chair, colluded with the official CHEST Twitter account to come up with some pretty difficult tasks.

If you could choose a team mascot, what would it be? Of course, a Wolverine, maybe to spice it up, it could be crushing a pair of Cs in its hands while stepping on an Eagle.

If you could choose a team uniform, what would it be? We would incorporate the Maize and Blue into a Unicorn dabbing.

What is your team cheer or theme song? We would have chosen “The Victors” by Louis Elbel, but did not obtain permission in time for the competition and so our back up is Berlin, “Take My Breath Away.”

If you win, how will you celebrate? We would graciously thank our competitors and send word back home, where surely there will be couches burning in the streets to celebrate.

CHEST Challenge Championship is sponsored by Mylan Inc.