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!
Outlaw Leverages Data to Help People with HIV
January 12, 2024
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Kaniqua Outlaw, CHIP alum[/caption]
Fall 2023 CHIP graduate, Kaniqua Outlaw is a Manager of Health Systems Integration at NASTAD - an organization that is driven to advance the health of people living with HIV/AIDS. Her internship during the Fall 2023 semester focused on utilizing Medicaid claims data to identify people with HIV to better support patient care. Medicaid is the largest insurer for HIV care in the United States. The medical data generated from Medicaid claims can help inform medical care for those people living with HIV. Currently, the methods used for analyzing Medicaid data to identify people with HIV are not reliable. Data can be of poor quality and incomplete or inaccurate, which impacts the ability to determine effectiveness of treatment and gaps in care. Outlaw looked at the various considerations for identifying people with HIV, including ICD-10 codes for diagnosis and CPT codes for specific services related to HIV. She worked to develop an algorithm that considers patient healthcare services received across states, links paid claims and patient encounter data, and also takes demographic variables into consideration. Next steps for her project include developing a code to run the algorithm, implement queries and develop a synopsis of the process.
Kincaide Explores ChatGPT
January 12, 2024
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CHIP Alum, Heather Kincaide[/caption]
Heather Kincaide is a fall 2023 graduate of the CHIP program. During her last semester, she completed her internship, which was focused on the functionality of ChatGPT and being able to conduct a literature review utilizing the technology. She worked closely with her supervisor, Dr. Fei Yu to complete the project entitled An Empirical Study Evaluating ChatGPT's Performance in Generating Search Strategies for Systematic Reviews. Her project began with a literature and social media review of how ChatGPT is currently being used or how it can be used to assist in academic research. She then conducted a peer review of electronic search strategies using ChatGPT to formulate a research question, create a customized search strategy and discover recommended bibliographic databases. This was followed by result evaluation by two professional librarians. Findings indicated limitations with the technology such as challenges with accuracy and relevance, generalized answers and assumptions, difficulty with complex queries and the need for human oversight of use. However, the technology can be a valuable tool for students and provide guidance on systematic reviews. For librarians, ChatGPT can be a time saver and especially useful for search translation, teaching, and prioritizing research areas. Heather was rewarded for her project and findings with the acceptance of her abstract by the Medical Library Association (MLA). Congratulations to Heather on the completion of this challenging and interesting internship project!
Gotz Named Director of CHIP
January 9, 2024
The CHIP team is excited to announce that interim Director, Dr. David Gotz will be taking on the CHIP Director position permanently. Since September 2023, Dr. Gotz has been the acting interim director for the program. From the outset, he quickly demonstrated his excitement and commitment to the CHIP program, students,
staff and faculty. Dr. Gotz has helped to lead several programmatic and process improvements in the short period of time he has been in his role, including advocating and helping to secure a standing faculty committee for CHIP to support the curriculum and admissions processes , executing a CHIP faculty retreat that generated several ideas for improvement to the CHIP program and he has worked to establish a formal collaboration with UNC School of Data Science. The School of Data Science will now become a member of the CHIP consortium (joining the School of Information and Library Science, 5 health affairs schools, Grad School, and Health Sciences Library). Commenting on his new role and continuing to work with the CHIP staff, Gotz said, "The year ahead promises to be an exciting one with many opportunities for us to continue pushing CHIP forward. I’m energized by the work we’ve done in just the last few months, and I can’t wait to continue our work together."