More than 500 students and young professionals pursuing a career in pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine converged in San Francisco to attend the Early Career Programs (ECP) at the ATS 2025 International Conference, where they learned about the latest technologies, scientific discoveries, and guidelines in the field. The two- and three-day programs were held May 16–18, 2025.

The educational aspect of the four pre-conference offerings — Student Scholars Program, Resident Boot Camp, Fellows Track Symposium (FTS), and New Faculty Bootcamp — was not the only benefit.

“Attending these programs is a must because you get to know so many people, and the networking that you establish can open so many doors,” said Hector Nieves, BSc, MD, a pulmonary and critical care fellow at VA Caribbean Healthcare System, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Dr. Nieves is a Student Scholars alumnus who found the experience of learning about so many topics in respiratory medicine in a short timeframe so rewarding that he applied for this year’s FTS.

“When I was in medical school, I participated in the ATS Student Scholars. That’s how I got to know the conference, and since then, I have been following the conference and the American Thoracic Society as a whole,” Dr. Nieves said. “Now, I am finally a fellow, so I’m participating in the FTS, and I hope to keep coming.”

He was one of 150 fellows in the adult track of the two-day FTS. Another 50 fellows participated in the pediatric track. The FTS incorporated faculty presentations on clinical issues related to the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of disorders, as well as a skills-based program.

“The faculty who are speaking to us are great people in the field with a lot of knowledge and experience, and I have learned a lot from them, specifically in the updates of diseases, such as COPD,” Dr. Nieves said.

He also said he was happy to take advantage of the opportunity to learn about extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which is not used in Puerto Rico.

Yoni Rubin, MD, PhD, who is finishing his residency and will begin a pulmonary and critical care fellowship at Stanford University this summer, participated in the adult track of the Resident Boot Camp. He said forging connections with the other ECP participants, as well as the faculty, was invaluable. 

“It’s nice to meet people from a variety of different institutions because they all have slightly different practices and different institutional preferences, like some institutions will use certain medications more, or techniques, or procedures, and it’s nice to meet a bunch of people in the field and see how people do things differently at different institutions and coming from different backgrounds,” he said.

The Resident Boot Camp is designed to help prepare those entering an adult or pediatric fellowship with the information, confidence, and knowledge needed to succeed from the first day of fellowship. The two-day course included large and small group breakouts and hands-on workshops.

Dr. Rubin said he found the skills practice of the Resident Boot Camp particularly beneficial.

“I really like getting hands-on experience, and we got to do our own pulmonary function tests (PFTs), and see how it feels to do a PFT as a person, and how the machine works,” Dr. Rubin said, adding that the Resident Boot Camp also provided hands-on training for bronchoscopes and fiber optic intubations. “It’s nice getting a little more time hands-on to figure out how to use these tools when you’re not trying to do the actual procedure.”

Of this year’s 172 participants in the Resident Boot Camp, 138 were in the adult track and 34 were in the pediatric track.

Another 70 people were accepted into the New Faculty Boot Camp, designed for members in training, including sub-specialty clinical and research fellows in their last two years of training and PhD post-doctoral fellows in their last three years of training, as well as early career faculty within the first three years of their first faculty position.

New Faculty Boot Camp attendee Agustin Cabrera Goncalves, MD, a third-year fellow at the University of Miami, is another returning ECP participating, having completed the Resident Boot Camp previously.

“All the boot camps are quite fantastic, and they are very well tailored to your training level,” Dr. Cabrera Goncalves said. “If you’re a resident coming into your fellowship, you’ll find teaching about the baseline pathology that you’ll see in pulmonology, especially pediatric pulmonology, and they will prime you for what you’re going to learn during your fellowship. [In the FTS], you’ll learn a little bit more about disease management, interstitial or chronic lung disease, and procedures. It consolidates the knowledge that you have already achieved during your fellowship. And then, when you are switching toward being a faculty, your priority is not so much learning the medical part of it, it is more to understand the systematic part of academia. So, the course is pretty good at teaching you what the opportunities are and how to do some networking.”

Ria Thompson, BSc (Hons), a second-year medical student in a combined MD-PhD program in Australia, was among the approximately 70 participants in this year’s Student Scholars Program.

Ms. Thompson found the diversity of the programming, having the opportunity to listen to other scholars present their work, and the hands-on skills practice as some of the more beneficial aspects of the three-day program. 

“It’s so cool to see what other students are doing,” she said. “It’s such a broad topic, and I’m loving watching the three-minute thesis talks. It just gives you such a good snapshot of all the different things students are doing around the world.”

Simulations enabled the participants to practice procedures, such as bronchoscopies and intubation.

“In the program, there are people who are undergrads all the way through to last-year medical students,” Ms. Thompson noted. “Getting hands-on practice is great for everyone’s learning, and they get to meet people, which is really exciting, and hear more about what they’re doing and their journey, and make really good connections.”

Attendees of the other ECPs echoed the value of being exposed to peers from a variety of backgrounds.

“The beauty of the ATS is having everyone from the United States and also internationally in one location. Seeing everyone’s approach, and how different it is, and their take on certain diseases has been really fascinating,” said Teressa Ju, MD, a second-year fellow at the University of Utah who participated in this year’s FTS and previously attended the Resident Boot Camp. “We talk about in medicine how there are different ways to approach something, and this is kind of like a marathon, getting all the updates all at once in the past couple of days, so I’m learning a lot.”

For more information about the ATS ECPs, email [email protected] or [email protected].

The ATS thanks Amgen | AstraZeneca, Savara Pharmaceuticals, Sanofi | Regeneron, Grifols USA, and Genentech, Inc. for their support of the ATS 2025 Early Career Professionals Pre-Conference Programs.