What you will be working on?
What I find the most fascinating is all the ways that seemingly different aspects of our lives & health intersect and influence one another. With that in mind, I plan on engaging on work that incorporates data from various range of modalities, from genomic sequencing data, to diet, to survey data on community & familial support structures. Specifically, I’m interested in tackling problems capable of improving quality of life & long-term health for people with conditions that disproportionately affect historically underserved communities. For example, right now I’m in the beginning stages of a project aimed at using clinical & genomic data to better match hypertensive patients to a regimen that effectively manages their condition with minimal side effects.
What are you looking forward to the most in your experience as a WA Scholar?
What I’m looking forward to the most is having the chance to learn from and work with some of the best minds in the space of biomedical informatics and computational biology here at Stanford. It doesn’t take much investigation to realize that, amongst both students and faculty here, around every corner is someone who has made a foundational discovery, published a method that’s seen widespread adoption, or is on the cusp of a finding that could reshape some aspect of how we think about using computational methods to support the mission of healthcare. From research seminars, to lecture breakouts, to informal discussions with peers and faculty, there’s no shortage of opportunity to share ideas, pitch questions, and collaborate on meaningful and engaging projects.
How you see this shaping your research and ultimately, career?
Within the Warren Alpert program, in DBDS, and here at Stanford more generally, one thing that’s been very clear to me is the emphasis on taking interdisciplinary approaches and viewing the problems we want to solve in healthcare from all applicable lenses. Who will derive benefit from the problems we work to address? How will proposed innovations fit into real clinical practice? How would these developments fit into the existing payor structures? Even in the short time I’ve been here to this point, I’ve been well trained in how to begin thinking about the problems I want to tackle with a more holistic view. My ultimate goal is to become teaching faculty, as I’ve rarely found experiences more rewarding than those I’ve had in teaching and mentorship, especially when both parties share the same passion for the subject matter. As I continue working towards this goal, I think that this program’s focus on honing the thinking and skills necessary to taking a comprehensive view on work in this space will be invaluable for me. I’ll be taking to heart all the mentorship and instruction I’m able to receive in learning the right ways to think about and solve problems in the domain of precision medicine, and I very much look forward to the day I’ll be able to pass that knowledge on to others.
From your perspective, what does it mean to you to be a WA Scholar?
To me, being a Warren Alpert Scholar means being granted the opportunity to play my part during a revolutionary time in the healthcare domain. As humans we all come from unique backgrounds, whether the signs and labels of each part of our identity and history be visible or not. In the age of precision medicine and personalized health, providing the ideal healthcare experience for the individual requires properly contextualizing and accounting for these differences between us. The breadth of available data and the scale of modern computational tools position us to be well equipped to do just that, but these tools and the solutions they give birth to can only be as respectful and conscientious of individuals’ differences as the researchers and innovators building and utilizing them.
As a Warren Alpert Scholar, I’ll have the opportunity to be one amongst many voices and listeners in this space. By leveraging a research community that is growing to be as rich in culture as the populations it serves, we can address the biggest problems in healthcare via computational solutions whose benefits are shared equitably. At the stages of medical problem selection, cohort selection in data collection, feature selection in model training, model evaluation, clinical deployment, and so many other steps in the pipeline from biomedical research to impactful healthcare solutions, we have the responsibility to make sure that the knowledge and methods we develop bring value to everyone in some way. My goal as a Warren Alpert Scholar is to not lose sight of what I use the education and training I receive to drive meaningful discovery and change for the communities dearest to me, and support others in doing so for the communities closest to them.