Students Impress at CHIP Networking Event
March 28, 2024
On March 26, CHIP students had the opportunity to meet and network with industry leaders in biomedical and health informatics. The health IT advisory board to the CHIP program came together for their annual meeting at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill. The board is composed of industry professionals currently working in the field. Board members provide valuable insight and feedback regarding the current state of the field, relevant topics to consider as part of the curriculum, and suggestions for programmatic improvements or additions to the program. Following the board meeting with CHIP leadership and staff, students arrived for a networking lunch. Industry representatives from SAS, Creo, Bioskryb Genomics, UNC Health, and MedStar Health were in attendance, in addition to CHIP alumni. Students were enthusiastic and engaged and board members were impressed with the level of preparation and professionalism demonstrated by the group. It was a successful event that CHIP hopes to replicate in future semesters.
Basnet Founds E-Healthy Social Media Platform
March 7, 2024
CHIP master's degree student and internal medicine physician at Frye Regional Medical Center in North Carolina, Bibhusan Basnet, MD, is committed to patient safety, patient advocacy, and innovative approaches to predicting healthcare trends and outcomes. These areas of passion have led to his pursuit of his master's degree in health informatics with CHIP. In 2022, Dr. Basnet, along with family and friends, set out to develop a health care social media company to offer patient education in a variety of user friendly formats intended to advocate for patient empowerment. E-Healthy collaborates with a number of early career medical graduates to make medical infographics, which distill complex information into easy to understand visual stories for patients. The company creates videos and provides other medical expertise through social media postings and website content. With Basnet's background in medicine and exposure to health informatics, he has worked with his colleagues to develop easy to use resources for patients to empower them with data and knowledge. Basnet commented, "This journey in health informatics has been rewarding to me. I have found my love in health care social media." CHIP is excited to see what the future brings for Dr. Basnet as he works to complete his health informatics degree and apply his new found knowledge to his medical practice and social media endeavors.
Hou Recognized for Research
March 5, 2024
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CHIP Doctoral Student Yujia Hou[/caption]
CHIP is excited to celebrate the recent accomplishments of Doctoral student Yujia Hou and the acceptance of her research papers to several conferences including: iConference 2023, IEEE/ACM CHASE (Connected Health: Applications, Systems and Engineering Technologies) 2023, AMIA 2023 Annual Symposium, and iConference 2024. The paper topics include research summaries for "Are Cancer Patient Receiving Appropriate Lifestyle Information Curing Clinical Visits?" and "The Development of an Automated Compliance Analysis Method on Clinical Notes to Improve Cancer Lifestyle Management." Her research interests include utilizing natural language process (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) on Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems to promote cancer lifestyle management. She is currently seeking research opportunities and positions that align with her areas of interest and excited to potentially collaborate and partner with new faculty across the UNC campus.
Meet CHIP Alum Halina Krzystek
March 5, 2024
Meet CHIP alum, Halina Krzystek! Halina is a graduate of the Master's of Biomedical and Health Informatics, class of 2020. Inspired by her colleagues, she continues to push herself to expand her skills and knowledge in order to make a difference in the lives of patients and their health care. Read on to learn more about Halina.
What led you to pursue the MPS BMHI program with CHIP?
I originally learned about bioinformatics through my undergraduate honors thesis, which added a computational aspect to a developmental cell biology project. After graduating with a Bachelor’s of Science in biology from
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Chip alum, Halina Krzystek[/caption]
Duke, I worked for a few years as a lab instructor in the Duke biology department, teaching evolutionary genetics. Both these experiences led me to want to pursue a master’s degree focusing on bioinformatics. I chose the MPS BMHI program because of their flexibility in classwork and the incredible support of the director and staff to forge my own path in the program. It proved to be the right decision as I was able to gain graduate experience in the field in a short amount of time, all while working a part-time research job on campus.
During my time at CHIP, I found an opportunity as a research analyst working for the High Throughput Sequencing facility (HTSF) at UNC, as well as the Bioinformatics and Analysts Research Collaborative (BARC) later on, where I worked on quality control and ad hoc analyses for the sequencing facility and other faculty on campus. Together with my coursework, my research experience at UNC was foundational to me finding employment after graduation.
What have you been up to since you graduated?
I was able to convert my student research analyst position to a full-time job as a bioinformatics analyst for BARC, working on projects from using machine learning methods to characterize the lung peptidome in cystic fibrosis models, to having a Nature article published on host-pathogen gene interaction and treatment in Covid-19. I used this experience to launch into an industry job working as a bioinformaticist at Q2 Solutions for the Data Services team. After three years I was promoted into a Team Lead role, which is my current position.
What do you like to do when you’re not at work?
My newest fascination is bird watching in my backyard. I find it so meditative and a great way to connect to nature and your environment. I also love crafting and playing tennis.
What do you find most rewarding about your work?
What motivates me every day is that our bioinformatics work supports our clients’ clinical research and trials to create better treatments for patients. As our company mission is that we treat every sample like a patient’s life depends on it. I am honored to have my daily work make a difference in patient care.
Who inspires you?
I am inspired every day by my colleagues, both those I had the pleasure of working with at UNC and those at Q2 Solutions. I work with extremely smart people who are dedicated to pushing the forefront of bioinformatics to improve healthcare. I learn so much from my colleagues and my knowledge and skillset grows the most by working with them.
What advice would you give current CHIP students?
My advice would be to take initiative and forge your own path. I think I was most successful with my time at CHIP because I knew what I wanted to get out of the program; I took the initiative to take additional classwork available to PhD students, and I made lots of valuable connections on campus by just applying, applying, and networking. I would also advise students to get practical experience outside of class and to work hard on technical skills. Building a portfolio, like a personal website and a Github, is a great way to showcase your skills and abilities to potential employers with concrete examples. I enjoy networking and connecting new professionals with opportunities, and I hope my experience and perspective can provide guidance for students on how to create their own path in the biomedical and health informatics fields.
HISA Building Student Community
February 7, 2024
The Health Informatics Student Association (HISA) is busy planning Spring semester events! HISA leadership, including master's students Ashley Victor, Yachna Goyal, Haritha Bhatta, and Adishri Satpute are working hard to offer CHIP students various social and networking experiences. During the fall semester, the
organization established a GroupMe chat to encourage easy and helpful communication among peers. In addition, the group held an impromptu social event over Halloween as well as participated in a variety of campus events. HISA is building on this momentum by organizing and hosting a variety of upcoming Spring semester activities including a coffee social at Epilogue on February 16 at 3pm, organizing group attendance to UNC internship/job fairs, and a future networking event with industry representatives (additional details to be sent out soon). Reach out to HISA president, Ashley Victor (ashv@unc.edu) to get involved!