University at Buffalo wins CHEST Challenge Championship in Chicago

A fortuitous final study session gave the University at Buffalo team the boost it needed to win the 2025 CHEST Challenge Championship on Tuesday, October 21, at CHEST 2025 in Chicago.

The Buffalo fellows-in-training—Jessica Baek, MD; Rishabh Bansal, MBBS; and Yu-Che Lee, MD, MPH—stood in second place before the final wager in the 24th annual Jeopardy!-style game of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine knowledge. Months of preparation and an evening of written trivia, diagnostic image review, video, and skill challenges came down to the last prompt:

Buffalo was the only team to provide the correct response of “What is osimertinib?”—a fact that Dr. Bansal had luckily reviewed “like 10 times” the morning of the competition, Dr. Baek said.

“This feels amazing,” Dr. Baek said, after her team lifted the Rosen Cup trophy and first-place check for $5,000. “We owe it to our program director, Dr. [Gregory] Fuhrer.”

Neither the program directors nor the contestants knew the questions—or even the category themes—in advance, so preparation required strengthening core knowledge as well as anticipating some of the game’s quirks.

The members of Team Buffalo said they spent hours polishing up on Chicago history, expecting it to be part of the game. It turned out there was no Chicago trivia, although some category names were homages to the host city, such as “The Bean”—both a nod to the renal questions within the category and the nickname of the popular reflective statue in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

The University of Colorado team of Jacquelyn Kercheval, MD; Christiaan Rees, MD, PhD; and James Wykowski, MD, came in second place for a prize of $3,000. Marshall University’s Abdul Muhsen Z. Abdeen, MD; Zakaria Alagha, MD, MSc; and Saif Ghishan, MD, took third place and a prize of $1,000.

“We got a lot of support from our mentors in the program,” Dr. Rees said. “It was a combination of: ‘We’re going to be proud of you, no matter what you do,’ and, ‘Here’s 1,000 pages of things to study.’”

All three teams uncovered live challenges during the course of the night. Two Buffalo team members had to perform an intubation using only their nondominant hands. Colorado team members faced a trivia challenge where their program director would be covered in an unannounced substance if the fellows missed an answer (they didn’t, and the substance turned out to be shiny streamers). And the Marshall team was given a two-part challenge—a medical-themed game of charades and a ball toss.

CHEST Challenge Championship founder and emcee William Kelly, MD, FCCP, opened the evening with a video of the contestants hamming it up to blink-182’s 1990s hit song “All the Small Things,” which was also a tribute to CHEST’s 90th anniversary. Dr. Kelly—with assistance from members of the CHEST Training and Transitions Committee—kept the evening running smoothly with a balance of showmanship and rigorous questioning.

“What I love about the CHEST Challenge is that these fellows will never forget it,” Dr. Kelly said. “It’s a lot of fun—we call it serious fun. The questions are really tough. They are vetted, have references, and are pushed back and forth in review.”

The energized crowd of some 550 people boisterously cheered the teams throughout the contest. Among them was 20-month-old Lucian Devine, who sat comfortably in his stroller and sported “Foodie” and “Trainee” ribbons on his official CHEST 2025 badge. He was accompanied by his mother, Katherine Devine, and his father, Adam Devine, DO, a fellow at the 2024 CHEST Challenge Championship winning institution, HCA Florida Aventura. Dr. Devine reflected on training alongside the 2024 championship team, noting that while the questions are challenging enough, the running timer and live crowd add even more pressure, difficulty, and excitement.

As the crowd filed out after the competition, Dr. Kelly was already looking ahead to preparations for the 2026 CHEST Challenge. The first-round preliminary screening tests for teams are set for the spring, and the top three qualifying teams will land a spot on the stage in Phoenix as the CHEST Challenge Championship celebrates its 25th year of competition.

Dr. Kelly promised that he and the huge team behind the event will put on a show worthy of the occasion.

“Every year our team tries to push it a little bit further, and so far, we still meet the bar,” Dr. Kelly said. “The pressure is on to figure out something more for Phoenix next year. That 25th anniversary is a huge deal.”