Hello! My name is Diya Gupta and I am a rising sophomore majoring in Bioengineering and minoring in Data Science! I’m also from Brown College. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting updates, experiences, and reflections while working as a summer Rice360 intern! I’m super excited and grateful for the opportunity to work on global health related engineering design projects with an amazing team of people! 

Before diving into my blog, I’d like to tell you a little more about myself. I’m from Seattle, Washington, and my family is originally from Maharashtra, India. Apart from classes, I’m a dancer on Rice Rasikas (classical Indian dance team), and very involved with Rice’s South Asian Society. I’m also a Peer Academic Advisor and a part of clubs like Biokind Analytics and Rice Medical Design. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, grown, and learned through my freshman year at Rice, and I can’t wait for what this summer and future years hold!

After much anticipation and excitement for the past month since school ended, this was finally the first week of our internship! The internship proceeded with an amazing start as I got to know an amazing team of intern colleagues and mentors, participated in several meaningful workshops and discussions, and got introduced to my projects for the summer. On our first day, Dr. Ashley Taylor initiated discussion on what each of our goals and values were. In reflection this was such a meaningful conversation that allowed me to verbalize what I valued most and made me feel more grounded and accountable towards my motivations and reasons for being an intern at Rice360. Even as I got my projects through the rest of the week, I kept in mind the values and goals I discussed to frame my approach to the tasks for the week. There were also several other important workshops during the week on situational awareness and protocols in other countries, ethics in global health, cultural humility and understanding, and historical perspectives. Dr. Taylor, along with other mentors, shared some of their personal stories and experiences with these subjects when they were working outside the US which really helped me unpack and ponder what global health, and this internship, meant to both me and other people in different settings. 

On the second day of the internship, we were introduced to our projects! Along with my teammate, Phillip DuBose (go check his blog too!), I’ll be working with clinicians at MD Anderson to build a breast cancer screening and/or diagnosis training model. Previously, MD Anderson, the WHO, and Rice 360 have worked extensively to expand access to cervical cancer screening through the LUCIA training model. However, access to breast cancer screening and diagnosis in low-income countries such as Mozambique remains extremely limited, leading to numerous preventable instances of undiagnosed and later stage breast cancer. Thus, access to screening and diagnosis is a top priority for our clinical mentors at MD Anderson. Furthermore, as per our research this week, we found that the WHO has also just very recently launched a Global Breast Cancer initiative this year. There is a clear need and push for expanding access to breast cancer screening and diagnosis Phillip and I are very excited to work on this summer. However as we learned about this tremendous need and impactful project idea, we also had many, many questions for many different people. We met with Dr. Meaghan Bond at Rice360 to discuss the work of Team Breast Test, who had worked on a similar project in 2018 and with Dr. Taylor to clarify the project scope and the purpose, target, and goals of the model. From these meetings, we collected that there were two main ways we could go about this:

1. Model 1: Provides training for breast cancer screening through clinical breast examination. The benign and malignant breasts should look and feel right for appropriate training. This model should also account for benign lesions/tumors. 
2. Model 2: Provides training for breast cancer diagnosis through ultrasound guided core needle biopsy. The lesions and tissue in this model need to look right inside on the ultrasound. This model should account for the gradual removal/deterioration of the model through practicing the core needle biopsy on it. 

However, we have crucial questions about both these models that we need to discuss with the clinicians at MD Anderson before proceeding with either model. Thus, in the next week we will be focusing on meeting several mentors such as the clinicians, Rice360 fellows who worked on the LUCIA model, and other colleagues at Rice360 in order to better define and address the needs of our target population. Furthermore, we will work on flushing out our Design Context Review and starting work on making Design Criteria for the engineering project.

Excited for another week and diving deeper into our project!

Until next week,

Diya