When Olivia Cullen graduated from college, she had two career goals: to become a physician and to perform impactful clinical research. Believing she was not ready to apply to medical school, she instead decided to pursue a Master of Science in Clinical Research (MSCR) degree at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“For me, the MSCR program was an opportunity to understand the inner workings of clinical research to discover what interested me most,” Ms. Cullen says. “Ultimately, I fell in love with data science research, and now I’m about to begin an MD/PhD program at Mount Sinai with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies in Medicine.” The Graduate School is launching this new concentration in Fall 2022, and Ms. Cullen is in the first cohort of students.
Under the leadership of renowned physician-scientist Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, Ms. Cullen classified data collected from electrocardiograms (ECG) in the Augmented Intelligence in Medicine and Science Laboratory (AIMS), which is part of the Mount Sinai Clinical Intelligence Center (MSCIC). Among her accomplishments was the creation of an algorithm to help identify patients with a rare heart condition known as hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis (haTTR). She worked closely with Dr. Nadkarni, who is Co-Director of the MSCIC and Clinical Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Mount Sinai, and with Akhil Vaid, MD, who is a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Nadkarni’s lab.
“My ultimate goal as a researcher is to use the vast amount of health care data we have been accumulating to better the lives of patients,” she says. “Specifically, I am fascinated by the applications of computer vision in the field of health care, and I want to improve analysis of medical imaging.”
Although Ms. Cullen completed her degree remotely from her home in New Jersey, she remained very close to the Mount Sinai community. “The connection I made with my advisors completely changed the course of my career,” she says. “They helped me get my foot in the door with data science research, and then they really advocated for me, helped me take the next steps in my career, and even helped me with my medical school applications.”
She also worked, she says, with a number of “really brilliant data science researchers” in the Targeted Healthcare Innovation Fellowship (THRIVE), which was created to address COVID-19-related health problems. She additionally participated in the Mount Sinai Innovation Partners Bootcamp to test an app she created to monitor COVID-19 patients. “I never actually got it off the ground, but it was an amazing experience because I learned a lot about what goes into developing medical technology and I will use those skills going forward in my career.”
As much as she enjoys clinical research, Ms. Cullen also immerses herself in understanding patient care and interaction, volunteering 10 hours a week as an emergency medical technician near her home. “Part of the reason that I find the MD portion of my degree so important,” she says, “is that I would like to have a specialty that will inform my research and ultimately help the people that I’m trying to serve.”