1. What is your current role at the CMRI?

I’m working as a Data Scientist with a focus on the electronic health record (EHR). I collaborate with other scientists to access, process, and analyze data to answer questions or test hypotheses that will improve patient care and/or clinic function. When clinicians help patients, they generate data as a part of simply adding to the medical records of those patients. When they or other researchers have a question or hypothesis that they suspect they could answer using data that have already been collected as a part of the electronic health record, we work together to access those data either from CMH or from a national database that has collected and de-identified patient data from dozens of health systems across the United States.

One of the most exciting parts of my job is getting to answer questions about a huge variety of important questions. Since beginning my position full time in July 2023, I’ve worked on topics ranging from appendectomies to lead poisoning to even how our changing climate is impacting who is susceptible to getting fungal infections.

2. What drew you to a career in research at the CMRI? 

When I was eight years old my brother was diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. He was not expected to survive past five years of age, and that led me to think a lot about how the functions of our cells keep death at bay for variable periods of time. As I grew older and learned more, I realized that the genetic sources of the variation we see in health and lifespan are the result of nearly four billion years of genetic trial and error. Researchers creating and studying mutations in a lab could not feasibly generate and test the vast quantity of genetic variants that nature has already tested over so many generations of natural selection. If we could appropriately access and interpret those genetic data, we could potentially learn more about the genetics of being healthy through studying the genome – vast stores of data that already exist – than we ever could through direct genetic manipulation and data generation. From 2000-2023, I worked to understand the relationship between natural genetic variation and lifespan. My most recent position before CMRI was at William Jewell College where I achieved tenure and eventually served for six years as Chair of the Department of Biology. In 2019, I met and helped to award The Citation for Achievement (Jewell’s highest alumni honor) to Mark Hoffman, PhD, Children’s Mercy Chief Research Information Officer, Professor of Pediatrics (University of Kansas Medical Center), and Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical and Health Informatics (UMKC).

Throughout my career in genetics, and in part through conversations with Dr. Hoffman, I became more and more intrigued by the potential of non-genomic sources of Big Data – those vast stores of electronic data being generated by research and by the daily practice of medicine – to answer questions too large or complex to be addressed by individual randomized controlled trials. When the medical needs of my own daughter necessitated that I move out of laboratory research, teaching, and administration into something that would allow me to work from home when necessary, I jumped at the chance to apply my existing skills as a researcher to one of the largest sources of Big Data – electronic health records – and to learn about medical informatics from someone who has been instrumental in shaping that field – Dr. Hoffman. Since that time, Dr. Hoffman, Dr. Natalie Kane, and the rest of the Research Informatics team have been key mentors in my development as a data scientist using EHR data.

3. What are your research/career goals? 

One of my professional goals is to use Big Data to add to our understanding of how a child’s community context (e.g., access to food sources, exposure to toxins or pollution, etc.) can influence their health.

4. What is your favorite thing about working at the CMRI?

Each day I wake up excited to contribute to the incredible science happening at CMRI, while simultaneously having the opportunity to build my expertise in a field that holds so much interest to me. (How lucky am I??) In addition, when I head to Adele Hall each day, I look forward to seeing my team members in Research Informatics and across CMRI and Children’s Mercy Kansas City (CMKC), including the clinicians, researchers, research coordinators, library and technical staff, folks in the café, shuttle drivers, and housekeeping. There is a culture of common purpose at CMKC that I enjoy immensely.

5. What is on your bucket list? 

I’d like to spend at least two weeks in each of at least three countries per continent around the world. (I realize that there aren’t three countries in Antarctica, but it is also on the list.) Our planet is so huge that exploring only three countries per continent for such a short time in each will only give me a tiny taste of the huge variation in culture, geology, and wildlife inherent in such huge landmasses, but I’ve got to start somewhere (and let’s face it – actually doing that much traveling will likely take me the rest of my life)!