Goals
Current and Future Goals
Academic and Professional Goals
My current career goals align well with my current academic goals. I plan to graduate with an undergraduate degree in biology and take a gap year to work in industry research. I hope to secure a position at Eli Lilly as the company offers both competitive growth and several programs for employees looking to complete their PhD. My long-term goal for my career is to graduate with an MD/PhD or an MD/MPH depending on how my interests evolve through my undergraduate career. I am very passionate about public health and access to equitable healthcare and as such I believe that being both a practicing physician and a practicing researcher will give me experience in the individual and overarching needs of my community. I think that a two-pronged approach is necessary to assess and meet the needs of our current healthcare system. I would like to eventually use my experience either to become a public health officer or a consultant for healthcare legislation.
My interest in research and public health arose in my adolescence, as I grew up with several family members that have degenerative disorders that impact their quality of life. I watched our healthcare system drain their finances and barely manage their symptoms. I am not at all ungrateful for what medicine was able to do for them, but I believe we can do better as a country, and I want to be a part of the solution. I believe that access to affordable and equitable healthcare is a human right, not a privilege only granted to those with the financial resources to procure it.
My goals very neatly align with my passions. I am grateful to have many passions that range from art and literature to the sciences and history. It was my experiences as a child and young adult that ultimately shaped my future career goals. I equate science to art. Both necessitate creative thinking, collaboration, criticism, and problem solving. So, I can see the beauty present in both landscapes and biochemical pathways. There is beautiful complexity in all kinds of unexpected places, and I am happy that I can recognize and appreciate it in the field I am working toward joining.
I have always been gifted in both art and science. I owe this to my tendency of making unusual connections and recognizing patterns. So, my passions have thankfully aligned with things that I am already good at doing. There is always more to learn and always a better way to understand something. This allows me to stay engaged with whatever it is I am passionate about and strive to perform better than I did the day before.
Certainty of My Future Career
I have been interested in pursuing a career in biochemical/genetics research since I was a sophomore in high school. The more I learn about biology and chemistry, the more fascinated I become with it. There is a beautiful stability to biology. Research in this field provides a chance to make predictions based on observations and previous experiments. In addition, patient care provides me with the interpersonal experiences that I want to strengthen so that I am better able to understand and serve my community. Problem-solving is probably my oldest love and working in a field that makes problem-solving the most important aspect of my work only seems logical.
My work outside of the internship also consists of working as a research assistant with the Public Policy Institute on campus in a subdivision called CRISP, which stands for the Center for Research on Inclusion and Social Policy. Working with CRISP is allowing me to explore the sphere of public health and community data sets. This job is providing very valuable experience that I will use to help me decide whether I want to pursue an MD/PhD or an MD/MPH.
Further Exploration
As I continue to grow and explore my career path, I am thankful to be part of the Nina Scholars Program at IUPUI which provides me with financial aid as well as professional connections. I have already been able to connect with an IUPUI and Nina Alumni who is working toward completing a program in genetics counseling. We are working on setting up a day for me to shadow her at her current job so I can explore other parallel career options and interact with other professionals who have graduated medical school.
In the rest of my time at IUPUI I am planning to continue exploring professional development opportunities like this internship. I am also going to study abroad in Central America my Junior or Senior year so that I can further focus my interest in equitable healthcare on an underserved population in the US (migrants from Central America and others within their communities). I am hoping that spending time in Central America in a public health program will help me to understand the relationship between central American migrants and healthcare and how we can better serve those communities within America’s healthcare system.
Internship Goals
Learn to design and perfect experimental models and procedures from a hypothesis.
The Work:
Discuss my plans for my assigned project with my mentor and tweak them in accordance with the feedback that I receive. Read and analyze peer reviewed published works in my field and assess their Methods to gain understanding of the types of experiments typically run in my field.
The biggest step I have taken toward this goal is creating a project plan for the work I will be completing over this semester and next semester. The plan is a rough outline that I sent to my mentor to review. I edited it based on his suggestions and corrections. I have found that writing a plan helps once literature on the topic is reviewed and connected to the project. Next,
Next, I would like to work with my mentor on asking questions that can be answered by science. I do not believe anything is impossible, but given the greater experience he has in research, he is much more well suited to tell me if something can be answered with the current investigative tools that we as scientists have. Continuing these conversations will be a vital aspect of my development as a scientist.
Over the next few years, I will continue asking questions, reviewing the current research, and making mistakes. Science, especially biological science because of the sometimes-bewildering outcomes from seemingly predictable experiments, requires constant growth and adaptation. Record-keeping then is vital to ensure reproducibility of an experiment. For the next few years, I will be talking, making mistakes, and writing it all down. This will help me to hone my ability to ask important questions and figure out how I can answer them when the time comes.
Assess how my research in the lab will affect the scientific community and the general public, and how to do work that provides a net benefit to both.
The Work:
Attend lab meetings and journal clubs to learn about on-going research in my field and my place of work. Write short journal entries that reflect on how this work may impact both the scientific community and the general public. Make note of ways in which the research could be improved or communicated to better serve both aforementioned parties. I am taking a class this semester called Science Writing that concerns how scientists must communicate differently with the public than they do with their colleagues. I do not believe I will ever reach a point where my communication of a topic is perfectly understood nor without error, however remaining up to date with current science articles and learning from the way in which they are written will help ensure I am able to communicate to the best of my ability.
Demonstrate mastery and understanding of the techniques and models used in genetics research and apply them to my future research projects.
The Work:
Read and annotate published works relating to genetics. Complete my lab projects in a timely matter so that I can begin learning and doing the specific techniques involved in gene editing (CRISPR). Discuss this topic with my mentor and learn about the challenges associated with it.
The biggest thing I can do to work toward this goal right now is moving toward a complete understanding of simple techniques like PCR, immunoblots, etc. that are often used as experimental protocols once gene editing of some sort has taken place. Understanding how gene editing is quantified and qualified in experimental models. In the years to come, I will need to ensure that I am able to actually begin working with gene editing software and hardware so that I have a solid foundation as I move forward in my career.
Additional Goals
I would also like to explore pharmacology, as mechanism of action is very important for drug research and development. In addition to this, I would like to learn more about MD/PhD/MPH programs and their requirements. The skills I will need to explore pharmacology are ones that I am already honing as I read literature associated with my field, but I think that having a greater understanding of chemical metabolism in humans will be paramount to making personal progress in my understanding. I would also like to learn more about the R&D process. An excellent way for me to learn about this would be an internship or position at a company that works in pharmaceutical development. As far as MD/PhD/MPH programs are concerned, I will use the resources I currently have such as a PI that has a DVM/PhD, to get a better understanding of how the programs work and what I can best do to prepare for them.