While traveling abroad, I ended up working as a medical interpreter at a ski lodge – a position that changed my career trajectory greatly. When it came time to return home, I sought a career that could be meaningful in such a way. After identifying medicine and beginning to study it, I became convinced that the use of genetic and genomic data will revolutionize first diagnosis of human disease, and ultimately its treatment and understanding of disease pathobiology as well (precision medicine).

To take part in what I think is a watershed moment in medicine, I completed a PhD on the genetic basis of rheumatoid arthritis, a complex disease with a multitude of genetic motivators as well as environmental influences. Following this, I completed my MD at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in 2020. Given pathology departments’ roles in clinical informatics as well as the processing of genomic data, I selected pathology as a specialty, and Michigan’s pathology residency program, due to its stunning faculty and breadth of clinical, didactic, and research opportunities—in particular, its strengths in informatics and molecular diagnostics.

At present, I take part in over a dozen different collaborations, consultancies, research symposia, and other formal and informal research relationships. Most generally, my research interest relates to how to apply basic concepts in population genetics in order to subserve and achieve goals of human health as well as social justice. More specifically, trans-ethnic analysis, systems biology, and immune-mediated diseases are my current foci.