Research Experience

Graduate Student Research Assistant at University of Michigan 

PI: Dr. X. Jessie Yang; Department of Industrial & Operations Engineering.

• Identifying the factors of patient-provider 'connectedness' in inpatient clinical settings through a qualitative, psychometric approach.

• Quantifying communication dynamics between internal medicine physicians and patients using conceptual recurrence quantification analyses.

Clinical Researcher Associate at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. 

PI: Dr. Tara Cohen; Gewertz-Cohen Lab; Department of Surgery.

• Conducted several human factors projects aimed at identifying and improving underlying systemic challenges jeopardizing patient care in surgery.

• Conceptualized, designed, and implemented a team intervention event hosted in real operating rooms at multiple sites.

• Tested the feasibility of a novel medical device in the operating room.

• Conducted user testing for a company's novel medical device designed for the ICU.

• Extracted patient chart data to identify systemic factors contributing to intraoperative death.

• Conducted a systematic review on operating room turnover time.

• Collected intraoperative data on surgical workflow through direct observation of robotic-assisted surgery and classification of flow disruption using a taxonomy.

•  Observed over 160 hours of robotic-assisted surgery across several surgical specialties and captured contextual information through qualitative case debriefs.

• Gathered workload data via questionnaires administered immediately after robotic-assisted surgery cases to better understand how specialty and role impact workload perceptions.

• Mentored three undergraduate interns and co-coordinated their summer projects related to surgery setup time, factors contirbuting to maternal intraoperative death, and workflow within gynecology procedures.

Research Assistant through the McNair Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) at CSU Long Beach. 

PI: Dr. Gabriella Hancock; Stress Technology & Applied Research Lab; Department of Psychology.

• Conducted a thorough literature review and formulated a technical poster highlighting the significance of heart rate variability (HRV) as an objective measure of cognitive workload.

•  Collaborated with my principal investigator to propose a project investigating the influence of workload and human-computer interactions on anesthesia safety in healthcare simulation.

Research Assistant at CSU Long Beach. 

PI: Dr. Arturo Zavala; The Addictions Lab; Department of Psychology.

• Actively collected behavioral data utilizing an animal model of addiction for a graduate lab member's thesis.

Research Lab Coordinator at CSU Long Beach. 

PI: Dr. Sherry Span; Department of Psychology.

• Conducted interviews and administered subjective self-report measures to collect data for a study investigating the effects of distress tolerance and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder on alcohol use disorder.

• Oversaw day-to-day lab operations, providing guidance and training to novice research assistants on data collection and data entry procedures for participant interviews.

• Facilitated lab discussions to coordinate data organization, collection, entry, and adherence to project deadlines.