2020-21 Fulbright U.S. Scholar

Last month I posted some news on Twitter…

The Fulbright Program, established in 1946 by Congress, is a widely recognized and prestigious international educational and cultural exchange program that’s currently active in over 160 countries. I first learned of the Program as an undergraduate student at Smith College (as a side, Smith is a top producer of student scholars!). Over the years I entertained the idea of living abroad one day, but the whole process seemed so daunting and out of reach. Ten years later I submitted my application for the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship. The official project proposal I submitted:

Title
Developing Data-Ready Librarians to Support Data-Driven Research: A Case Study in South India

Abstract
In an era of data-powered health and data-driven research, it is essential that health sciences librarians and information science professionals have the capability and capacity to meet the evolving needs of the scientific communities they support. For this project I plan to use my research to inform my teaching. My primary research project is an exploration of research data support from academic health sciences libraries and education for students and professionals in library and information sciences in a developing nation. I plan to teach short courses and organize seminars and workshops of interest. Dissemination of this work will include presentations and publications.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter for the last few years, it will be no surprise to you that the project is an extension of the work I’ve been doing with creating educational opportunities for health sciences librarians to develop their skills in data support. I’ve been working with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Training Office (NTO) to develop and teach courses on research data management, data science, and open science. I’ve also participated in a National Library of Medicine-sponsored workshop on developing the librarian workforce for data science and open science and am currently part of a Medical Library Association (MLA) working group to develop a data services competency and specialization.

I am excited to join Professor Devika P. Madalli in research and teaching activities and plan to be based at the Documentation Research and Training Centre (DRTC) within the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore from July through December 2020. DRTC is a premier teaching and research center within library and information sciences (LIS) in India and was established in 1962 by the father of modern LIS, S. R. Ranganathan. I remember learning his five laws of library science in my foundational LIS course.

I believe I am the first health sciences/data librarian to travel and study in India. Much of my current professional network is based in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia. Hence, this Fulbright experience will extend my international collaborations while deepening my knowledge of professional practices. I’m already connecting with other librarians who are also Fulbrighters, and I hope that by speaking openly about it, this inspires more of us to apply for the opportunity.

Reflecting on the Past Decade

I haven’t posted in a long time, and I keep meaning to come back to writing. Let me just start with taking a moment to reflect on some personal milestones during this past decade:

  • completed a dual-degree graduate program and earned my master degrees in library & information science (2011) and in mathematics (2012)
  • met my now-husband while in grad school and got married (2015)
  • went on my first flight (2010)
  • went on my first international trip (2012)
  • learned to drive and bought our first car (2013)
  • fulfilled my first career goal of becoming a Mathematics Librarian while at Dartmouth (2014-15)
  • bought our first house (2018)
  • birthed our first child (2018)
  • presented my first keynote at a regional conference (2018)
  • published two peer-reviewed articles (2018-19)

I’ve also lived in New York, Massachusetts, Washington DC, New Hampshire, and Utah; went on several road trips across the country, mostly camping along the way; hiked and explored a number of national and state parks; and traveled internationally to Canada, India, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Brazil, and the United Kingdom.

I have many people to thank for their love, care, and support at every step along the way. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my husband who has supported all my endeavors, been with me through all the ups and downs, and brings so much joy to my life; my parents and siblings who can always be relied upon to have heartfelt talks; and the few friends who are scattered around the country but will drop everything to be there for me. I also want to acknowledge every professional who has mentored me, offered advice, or simply wanted to connect.

Thank you ❤️

GABiomed Last Session and Overall Thoughts

So exciting! I finally got to see Dr. Patti Brennan speak up close! In the words of Dr. Mike Ackerman…

Plus, I even got to deliver my elevator pitch on reproducibility! I probably talked too fast in my excitement over the course I taught this summer…

Dr. Brennan’s talk was inspirational and engaging. Definitely watch these NLM videos — they’re short and very well done. She used the ARS/clicker questions to poll the group for our thoughts on where NLM should spend its budget and where it should place its priorities. We had great discussions and I really felt like she was listening to our input. In short…

Anyway, you can read the rest of the live-tweets by clicking on any of the above tweets or searching for #GABiomed to catch up on what happened the whole week. My previous posts (days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) also contain some after-session thoughts.

But the real question is, did it meet my professional development goals?

In my application I had written that my goal for this program was to learn effective practices and be able to teach others how to utilize the current tools and resources in biomedical informatics, clinical informatics, big data, and genomics research. My hope was to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to partner with researchers and win grants for projects where the library can plan an active role in building applications for informatics and data support.

This course not only helped me fulfill my goals, but it also broadened my mind in so many other ways. Overall this was a fantastic program that brought together subject experts (including patients!), information professionals, physicians, and researchers to learn from each other. It was intense, immersive, and inspirational. Now I have to work on cultivating partnerships with researchers!

Our class photo (missing some speakers who left before it was taken)

NLM GA BMI Course Fall 2017 Class Photo
NLM Georgia Biomedical Informatics Course Fall 2017 Class; Photo by Dr. Judy Ackerman

(Look who’s standing behind me!)

Would I recommend taking this course to others?

Without hesitation, I would’ve recommended this course to anyone interested in biomedical and health informatics, but alas, the course is now on hiatus and will be restructured. Read the announcement here. I look forward to the next iteration! Perhaps it’ll have components like DSVIL (i.e. hands-on with software)?

GABiomed Day 5

The last full day of sessions contained great topics and served as entryways to keep learning more.

Session #1: Controlled Vocabularies and Semantic Standards –Olivier Bodenreider, MD, PhD

  • A great introduction to some core controlled vocabularies and ontologies in use today. Great emphasis on caution with adopting one without knowing its limitations.
  • The hands-on exercises depended heavily on websites to work; unfortunately we had too many people trying to access the same pages at once and not enough bandwidth.
  • We all signed up for a UMLS license but we didn’t do anything with it. Spoke with him later and he thought a workshop session was going to cover it. Oh well.

Session #2: EHRs, APIs, and Apps –Jeremy Warner, MD

  • ALL. THE. THINGS. Plus, fascinating look at the history of medical records and how we got to where we are today.
  • Would’ve liked to learn more about API programming.

Session #3: Natural Language Processing Support for Clinical Tasks –Dina Demner-Fushman, MD, PhD

  • Nice introduction to natural language processing.
  • Wish the hands-on portion was better explained and we actually were able to go in and do some annotation.

Session #4: Organizational Issues in Biomedical Informatics –Kim Unertl, PhD

  • Another amazingly engaging speaker! We had lots of thought-provoking discussions.
  • Organizational issues is a topic we hardly ever talk about and really impacts the way we work so I’m glad it was on the program.

And then evening adventures…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZG_nJhl3Ur/

We had a fun “hayride” to a fancy barn for a sit-down meal. Afterwards a smaller group of us went to the Rollins Planetarium at Young Harris College. We saw “Back to the Moon for Good” which was narrated by Tim Allen. Somehow I missed that there exists prize money for going to the moon through the Google  Lunar XPRIZE.

Side note: I broke down and had cheesecake at lunch AND chocolate lava cake at dinner. They were really good! 😅

GABiomed Day 4

Another packed day of sessions.

Session #1: Security and Privacy –Daniel Fabbri, MD

  • Key phrase: Utility + Privacy = 1
  • Lots of great discussion about the challenges of systems.
  • Interesting idea was proposed: “point-to-point data sharing” to balance privacy with research (reproducibility).

Session #2: Biomedical Data and Information Visualization –Zhiyong Lu, PhD

  • I love data visualization talks. It’s always fun to see how different people present the content and the examples they use to illustrate (haha) their points.
  • Related: BD2K seminars and the symposium I attended last fall

Session #3: Using Telehealth to Increase Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration and Improve Heath Care Outcomes –Karen Rheuban, MD

  • Nice overview of what UVA is doing in telehealth services
  • Would’ve liked a practical action we could take in our current roles

Session #4: Public Health Informatics –Jessica Schwind, PhD

  • Definitely one of the best presentations so far. She was engaging and funny, and her passion for infectious diseases really shone.
  • I actually didn’t mind her Prezi presentation because it was mostly graphics/hardly any text, and very well designed.

Session #5: Mathematical Modeling with Clinical Decision Support –Dmitry Kondrashov, PhD

  • Another great example of science communication at work. He explained modeling in a very accessible way.
  • Reminded me of my college and grad school days. This is the third time I’ve studied/encountered the S-I-R model. The first time was in calculus using this open textbook.

And yes, read Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction! I’m considering putting in a proposal for MLA’18 to have a book group discussion…

Side note: 2 cups of coffee, no dessert, and a walk! I think I did good today.

GABiomed Day 3

Today we got the afternoon off to rejuvenate and refresh our bodies so our minds can be ready for the rest of the week. My body felt so much better after yoga and after lunch, I went on a group hike with Kathleen Carlson, Maribeth Slebodnik, and Clare Hicks. It was a lot of fun, especially with Maribeth pointing out all the cool plants (and all the poison ivy!) on the trail.

Session #1: Consumer Health Informatics –Rebecca Schnall, PhD, RN

  • First I have to say, I really appreciate and admire Professor Schnall’s dedication to us and her work. She flew in late last night (arrived about 2AM) and flew right back this afternoon.
  • She gave us a researcher’s perspective of working with people living with a chronic disease.
  • We discussed challenges of building a user-friendly application, evaluating consumer health websites, and tailored messaging.

Session #2: mHealth Technology –Rebecca Schnall, PhD, RN

  • This second part built upon the first but it was a great example of science communication. She gave a very accessible research talk about her current projects –in particular VIP-HANA.
  • The group exercise to consider the needs of different stakeholders in app development was enlightening.
  • Too bad we didn’t have time to talk much about how body sensors fit into this landscape of apps and data collection.

Session #3: Ethical Issues Related to Research, Evaluation, Publication, and Implementation in Biomedical Informatics –Randolph Miller, MD

  • One of the best sessions I’ve attended about ethics. It was entertaining and engaging.
  • The scenarios were thought-provoking and generated a lot of discussion.

Side note: I only had cheesecake at dinner!

GABiomed Day 2

Another exciting day of hot topics in biomedical informatics! Lots of great conversations during breaks and meals as well. Click on the tweet to get the threaded view of a session.

Session #1: Genetics, Genomics, and Why We Care –Donald Lindberg, MD

  • Great review of genetics. Reminds me of my college days but the field has grown so fast.
  • It was fun to listen to Dr. Lindberg’s personal stories about major figures in history.
  • Recommended reading: The Double Helix (edit: the Watson one –thanks to Kim Yang for pointing out there are books with same title)

Session #2: Precision Medicine from an Informatics Perspective –Elmer Bernstam, MD

  • I’ve heard similar talks about precision medicine so the first part wasn’t anything new to me
  • Raised questions about issues around patient consent, profiling, cost of testing.
  • We need more interoperability between systems!
  • EHR alerts alone can be a whole other talk. Lots of great post-talk discussion about this.

Session #3: NLM Resources –Kathy Davies, MLS

  • Wow, what a lot of NLM resources I didn’t know about 😳

Session #4: Practical Bioinformatics for the Clinic –Eric Sayers, PhD

  • I’m now a convert of starting with MedGen as a landing page for exploration into the literature, clinical aspects, and genetic aspects.
  • The case study we looked at was really interesting. See this website for their story.

Session #5: Exercises in Knowledge Retrieval –Kathy Davies, MLS and Eric Sayers, PhD

  • I teamed up with Elena Azadbakht to work on case studies, which allowed us to dive deeper into exploring resources presented in Sessions #3 and 4.

Side note: today I was much better about my coffee and sugar consumption during breaks, and took a long walk around the resort before dinner. Next I have to work on choosing which meal to have dessert with! They serve pies and/or puddings during both lunch and dinner. Breakfast is the only time we get fruit!