ABOUT ME

“This is gonna be the best day of my life. My li-i-i-i-i-ife.” I sang to myself in a hushed, out-of-tune tone, forgetting the rest of the words. I received several confused stares from strangers, but I didn’t care. I skipped out of the Engineering Center, my flats nearly falling off twice. I had just gotten an internship with Systems Utilization Research For (SURF) Stanford Medicine researching diabetes technologies.

I have been fascinated with diabetes technologies for longer than I can remember. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age one, and I needed to adapt to a dozen-plus finger pricks a day. Later, I shifted away from finger pokes to insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitor devices. But because a toddler can’t exactly help develop these technologies, I got involved in the diabetes fundraising community. After seeing my parents going to an adults-only diabetes fundraiser, I asked them why I couldn’t go, especially since I was the one with diabetes. This prompted my family and me to create the Royal Ball, an annual family-friendly gala with themes ranging from pirates to princesses, that raised $1 million for diabetes research over 6 years.

After that, I organized One Walk fundraiser teams to raise money for JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), where my team was once the top non-company fundraising team in the Bay Area. My next initiative was giving the Fund-A-Cure speech at JDRF’s black tie Hope Gala that raised over $2.8 million and hosted over 550 people. As this was one of my favorite days of my life, I have stayed involved with this fundraiser as an event coordinator last year and this year.

At that time I started participating in an artificial pancreas clinical trial. The device dramatically improved my blood sugar management and quality of life. I was intrigued. I asked the leader of the clinical trial for an internship with one of his coworkers, and I was accepted by a PhD from Stanford’s SURF, and have been working with them ever since.

I started by managing SURF’s social media and website, which earned me the title of Director of Scientific Communications, but I soon got involved in a project on factors associated with diabetes technology disparities. I conducted a literature review; created a survey, consent form, and assent form to efficiently target gaps in information I found in the review; secured a $5K grant from JDRF; created Facebook advertisements for our survey; wrote the introduction and methods sections of our paper; learned R to create mock-up figures; got our project approved by Stanford’s Institutional Review Board; and started collecting data. I will be listed as the first author on the research paper (target submission is spring 2022).

Having lived experience with the wonders and pitfalls of these technologies, I have made it my mission to improve these devices and get them to as many people as I can. Whether it’s through SURF or helping set up the first artificial pancreas clinical trial in India, I want to make sure that in the future, all people with diabetes get access to improved technologies regardless of socioeconomic status or background.

Living with diabetes has also taught me that adjusting a single detail can make a significant impact on my health and life. One low blood sugar won’t eliminate a year from my life, but many out-of-range blood sugars could put me at risk for complications or even shorten my lifespan. As an aspiring biomedical engineer, I’m hoping I can continue conducting research, positively impacting others, and find the next “best day of my life” in college.