Goals

This semester, the most important step in reaching my long-term goals is to complete and submit my application to IUPUI’s 4+1 BS+MS program. This step in my collegiate career will allow me to start taking master’s level courses in the upcoming fall semester. In addition to the LHSI showcase, I am completing this internship as part of a capstone experience and presenting a poster at the SOIC Capstone night. This credit is also being applied for Honors credit and will require me to complete a reflection piece at the end of the semester to submit to the Honors College. These applications of the LHSI experience will allow me to better my communication and presentation skills that I can apply later on in future positions.

Additionally, I have applied and been accepted into a summer internship position at TRIMEDX as a software engineering intern. My plan is still to continue working at my current internship site in tandem with the position at TRIMEDX. I think this will allow me to gain insight into both academic research and the industry aspect of the informatics field. While my current internship focuses on developing and implementing solutions on the front-end, working at TRIMEDX will expand my skillset in the back-end data preparation and management side in a clinical application.

My goals have not faltered too much from those I initially wrote on the LHSI application. I stated I wanted to be able to graduate IUPUI with my bachelor’s and master’s degree, which I am now taking actionable steps to do. Prior to working at my current internship site, I thought I would be more interested in the medicinal and molecular genetics route of biomedical informatics. However, working in clinical informatics has greatly interested me to the point where I can see myself continuing down a career path in this field. On my application I stated “Exploring different areas outside of my courseworks permits transferable experience and strengthens my interests into a concrete path.” This still holds true to my values today and can be seen in my future position at TRIMEDX as a software engineer. This position isn’t explicitly in the realm of my long-term career goals, but allows me build my repertoire of skills I can apply to future roles.

My long-term career goal is to lead research that involves the interdisciplinary combination of embedded cultural perspectives from anthropology in the realm of informatics. Through my anthropology coursework, I envision extending informatics solutions in healthcare to be more informed through a cultural relativist lens. I pose that informatics solutions designed with cross-cultural caregiving in mind can only positively influence patient-driven care as differing cultural beliefs are being respected at every step. This overarching goal can be broken down into a multitude of steps starting with applying for IUPUI’s 4+1 BS+MS program, which I am going to continually work on in the upcoming months to submit before the deadline in early April. Participation in the graduate program will allow me to gain a foundation of advanced knowledge and skills that will serve as the next vital step towards my goals of conducting research in informatics. Once accepted, I want to find different ways to fund my master’s degree, possibly by participating in on-campus research. By the end of next year, when I graduate in the spring with my bachelor’s, I need to have employment lined up as a research assistant so I can work towards leadership positions within an organization. In the scope of a downstream 5-year plan, I would like to figure out if I want to obtain a PhD and look for post-doc programs that would completely fund this additional degree.

The time at my internship site has greatly affected my future career direction as I have a better idea into what field I want to specialize in within Biomedical Informatics. This has shown me that even within a narrow field of clinical informatics in application, there is still a wide range of possibilities for research and advancement. Even in publications, there is still a wide scope in the difference of writing a literature review analyzing past implementations of documentation techniques in healthcare settings versus making a design that is implemented to aid clinicians and writing of its effectiveness in bettering patient care. In terms of career aspirations, I have realized I value implementing a design that is going to directly better patient care in comparison to publishing a work that is viewed only in academic spaces. While I now have a better understanding of my motivators in the work I am conducting, I also understand continually publishing one’s findings in a byproduct of progress. The writing process itself is an act of learning since you have to be able to convey your ideas in a language that is understandable to the public to the solution made can be shared to others to be replicable and built upon.

I feel fairly confident in my knowledge of preferences in terms of what type of work fits well within my personality and career aspirations. Meaning, I desire work that challenges my intellectual capabilities and pushes me to grow and refine my skillset. The opportunities that research affords further ignites my passion to continually ask new and innovative questions with the ongoing pursuit of knowledge. This is very apparent in my current workplace environment as I have to consistently seek out new solutions to encountered problems. I have also gained a greater insight into what working conditions I am the most productive in. In the future, this will allow me to assess if I will be able to thrive in the situated workplace culture and environment.