Last spring, at an MSL Student Governance meeting, Javier Jara (MSL ‘20) (pictured above), an MSL part-time student who was also a Research Assistant Professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine, pitched us on the idea of holding a Symposium to highlight the work of MSL students. He wanted us to have a showcase event where MSL students could show the public what the MSL program is all about. The MSL staff and Student Governance Committee loved the idea and the MSL Symposium was born!
Fast forward to May 2020. Though the global pandemic made it impossible for us to hold an in-person event, we hatched the plan for an online version of the event, and on May 8, we held the 2nd Annual MSL Symposium, “At the Intersection: STEM, Law, Business, and the MSL.” Despite the many disruptions our students experienced during the Spring 2 term they admirably carried on the Symposium tradition, and came together over Zoom to display their work. In doing this, they shined a bright light on the importance and benefits of multidisciplinary study.
The symposium featured the work of 17 MSL students on a variety of topics ranging from artificial intelligence to cannabis legalization. Here is a full list of the presentations in each of three separate Zoom rooms:
- MSL Symposium 2020 Welcome Zoom Room
- MSL Symposium 2020 Zoom Room 1
- International Team Project (ITP): My Big Fat Greek Economic Crisis, Winisha Smith (MSL ’20)
- Deep Learning in Healthcare, Tiffany Zhao (MSL ’20)
- AI: The Next Microwave Oven, Sanaz Zahedi (MSL ’20)
- Potential Benefits and Risks of Federal Legalization of Cannabis, Joe Parrish (MSL ’20)
- Say What? Communicating to the Masses, Katherine Culbert (MSL ’20)
- MSL Symposium 2020 Zoom Room 2
- Health and Human Rights: Access to Health Project, Orkidea Bajrami (MSL ’20), Amie Patel (MSL ’20) and Keerti Tadimeti (MSL ’20)
- Out-of-Pocket Medical Costs for Disadvantaged Populations, Eric Ni (MSL ’20)
- Correlation Between Crimes and Proximity to Police Stations in the City of Chicago, Aaditya Rawal (MSL ’20)
- Addressing the Rising Rates in Medical Malpractice, Radhika Raturi (MSL ’20)
- Venture Strategies through Case Examples, T. Alastair DeNova (MSL ’20)
- MSL Symposium 2020 Zoom Room 3
- Understanding the Healthcare Regulatory Process and Constraints, Aishwarya Raj (MSL ’20)
- Project Traffic Light: Identifying Victims of Human Trafficking in the Justice System, Eric DeChant (MSL ’20)
- The Biotechnology Patent Landscape, Jill Crich (MSL ’20) and Cristina Craig (MSL ’20)
- Closing the Gap in Healthcare Disparities of African American Women in Cancer Clinical Trials, Bridgette McCullough (MSL ’20)
A special thanks to all of our student presenters – your presentations were wonderful and we appreciate your resilience throughout. Thank you, also, to Javier Jara for creating what is now an ongoing MSL tradition!
