Med Students Contend for Top Gingerbread House Honors

With noisy excitement, amazing creativity and good-natured competition, 20 teams of first- and second-year BUSM students vied for top honors in the Gingerbread House Wars. Sponsored by the Safford Academy of Advisors and the BUSM Alumni Association, the competition resulted in traditional snow-covered houses, a pirate ship, Fenway Park, a castle, Boston Public Garden, a BUSM villa and the entrance to Boston Medical Center, among many other designs.

“We thought it would be a fun way to de-stress after a derm exam and a neuroscience lecture,” said Lili Sadri (MED ’17), Safford Academy of Advisors representative and an organizer of the event.

Participants had one hour to make their gingerbread houses with the supplies provided and incorporate a secret surprise ingredient (Cheeto Puffs) into their designs. “I haven’t made one in a while but I remember having fun making gingerbread houses growing up,” said Safford Academy representative Vish Gupta (MED ’17), who organized the supplies and made all of the royal icing used to hold the structures together.

“Vish and I were really excited that everything came together for this event. Our classmates pulled through and turned some homemade royal icing into some royally awesome gingerbread houses,” added Sadri. “It was great to see how much creativity everyone has.  We all agree it was a nice reminder of what a great group of students we have around us at BUSM, all with lots of diverse talents and visions that they bring to the table.”

Faculty judges Jarrett Rushmore, PhD, Robert Witzburg, MD, and Ann Zumwalt, PhD, volunteered for the difficult task of choosing the winners. Top honors went to an impressive castle design called “Pterygopalace,” a play on the anatomy term pterygopalatine fossa, complete with a moat they called “the Canal of Schlemm,” another anatomical structure. The creators, “Team Squints and Tender Hearts,” were class of 2017 members Hannah Harp, Ryan Quinton and Laura Ha.