Meet the Expert: Claire Cywes

18 hours ago | Kristin Eggebraaten | @keggebraaten

In this Meet the Expert blog, we want to introduce you to an aspect of Mayo Clinic that is critically important to our mission of advancing the science of medicine. At Mayo Clinic each year, we graduate new doctors from our Alix School of Medicine and Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. In 2025, 46 new physicians joined the prestigious Mayo Clinic Rochester alumni, and 42 new biomedical scientists received doctoral degrees. In addition, 37 students received master's degrees.

Claire Cywes is a 2nd year medical student at the Alix School of Medicine. She works closely with our liver and kidney transplant team on biomedical ethics projects. One such project is “Multiple listing across the acuity circle eras: Are we doing enough to limit disparities in access to transplant?” for which she received an award that she will tell you about below.

Describe the process of gaining entrance to Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine.

Getting into medical school took many years of dedicated work prior to the actual application cycle. I started thinking about going to medical school early in my college years. During my first year, I was accepted to Mayo Clinic Jacksonville’s CRISP program which facilitates a one-on-one mentor-student pairing to conduct clinical research over the summer. My mentor during that program (and still my mentor to this day) helped me discover my passion for transplant. Later in college, I participated in additional summer internships which drove me further down the path of wanting to attend medical school and conduct clinical research. Towards the end of my college career, I made the decision to take a gap year before applying to medical school, which was one of the best decisions I could have made. I spent the year in Philadelphia further developing my research and clinical skills through a mentored program and spent my free time writing my medical school applications. I credit the mentors I have had the privilege of working with as not only the reason I am here at Mayo Clinic now, but also as the reason I want to pursue work in the field of transplantation and transplantation ethics.

How does Mayo Clinic differ from other medical schools you could have attended?

I think one of the most amazing aspects of being a student at Mayo has been the mentorship I have been able to receive not only as a medical student but also as a pre-med in college. In fact, the mentorship here is one of the primary reasons I chose to attend Mayo Clinic for medical school. The faculty here go out of their way to join programs and guide students through any obstacles we may face. Whether it is offering us a place in their lab and research projects of our own or scrubbing into surgeries during our first few months of medical school or taking an hour our of their extremely limited free time to speak with us about our future careers, the faculty here truly care about our development into doctors.

What has been your favorite class or your favorite experience thus far in your medical degree?

Starting the winter of our first year, we staff the student led community clinic which offers care to people who are underinsured/not insured. During these clinic days, each student leads an appointment (with consultant supervision) for a patient with any number of chief concerns, allowing us to apply our medical knowledge to help a member of the Rochester community meet their health goals.

Why did you choose biomedicine/ethics as your primary interest?

In medicine, there is such a delicate balance between helping and hurting. I think medical ethics, and transplant ethics in particular, speak to this concept. Our class had several sessions on medical ethics, and Dr. Diwan, one of the liver and kidney transplant surgeons here and my now mentor, came to speak to our class about transplant ethics. While I participated in research in the field prior to this session and was familiar with the topics mentioned, his talk brought up questions that I could not answer by reading the existing literature. Since then, I have been interested in exploring the ethical side of transplant as much as possible, looking not only at outcomes of the surgeries, but also how the whole process of being listed and receiving an organ fit into the core bioethical principles.

What are you currently working on in your research? What accolades have you received?

My current research focuses on the ethics of patients being listed for transplant at multiple transplant centers, known as multiple listing. This aspect of transplant has been shown to give patients an advantage in receiving a transplant compared to those who are only listed at a single center. However, not all patients are able to pursue multiple listing for a variety of reasons such as finances and degree of illness. My research focuses on teasing apart the trends in multiple listing practices over the last several years and the ethical implications of multiple listing as a practice as well as suggesting essential components to make transplant more equitable.

For this work, I have been fortunate to receive acceptance to several conferences to present the work across multiple organs. The biggest accomplishment to date was the project’s acceptance to the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease’s The Liver Meeting for a plenary presentation. In addition, I also received AASLD’s Early Career Investigator Award in Healthcare Disparities Research for the work. I am incredibly grateful to everyone in the lab who has helped me reach this point and to AASLD for this honor.

Is there anything else you would like patients to know about medical students?

I think what I would want patients to know about us is that while we are here to learn how to be doctors and are incredibly grateful to the patients who allow us to join their medical journey, we are also here to help patients in any way we can. We may not know the answers to all of your questions right away but will dedicate our time to finding the answer. Their patience and willingness to involve us in their care is what allows us to thrive as future physicians.

We know how demanding medical school can be. But what do you like to do in your small amount of spare time?

In addition to clinic-related activities and conducting different research projects in transplant and transplant ethics, I enjoy spending time with my classmates in my spare time. Our class of just over 50 people has been able to mesh with one another and have formed several informal settings such as a reading group, cooking group, and board game group where we are able to spend time together. I also really enjoy meeting my classmates at one of our local parks for a game of pickup basketball or pickleball.

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