Six students have joined the ever-growing ranks of those pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Precision Health. The Fall 2020 cohort represents U-M’s School of Kinesiology, Medical School, and College of Pharmacy.

Elissa Hult
Medical School
Molecular and Integrative Physiology
PhD Student
Elissa Hult is a PhD student in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology. Her professional career interests lie in engaging with the health professions in an advisor capacity, such as a medical science liaison, drug or product consultant, or being involved in clinical trials. She hopes to fulfill both her personal interests and professional goals from the courses that the Precision Health Graduate Certificate Program has to offer. As a physiologist, she is accustomed to thinking of biology as a multifaceted entity where the effects seen in one cell type or organ system may be highly dependent on a process that seems otherwise unrelated. She enjoys learning about different facets of health, with particular interest in health policy, epidemiology, and translational medicine.

Jingyi Kang
School of Kinesiology
Sports Management
MS Student
Jingyi Kang is a master’s student in Sport Management in the School of Kinesiology. Her interests lie in using sports to improve population health. Growing up as an athlete, Jingyi lived in a community with ample access to sports facilities. She discovered early on that being engaged in sports is a great way to improve health, which is how her interests in community health began. Through her study of sports sociology, however, she discovered that not all communities have equal access to facilities, which could ultimately lead to poor health outcomes. With the knowledge she acquires through her precision health coursework, she hopes to apply a multidisciplinary approach to work with nonprofit sports organizations to increase access and improve health outcomes.

Rachel Logue
School of Kinesiology
Movement Science
PhD Candidate
Rachel Logue, a doctoral student in the Movement Science program in the School of Kinesiology, is interested in research that involves collaboration across disciplines and an intersectional approach. Her research focuses on how to improve hand function in older adults. Hand function is an area that doesn’t get a lot of attention in older adult populations, but the hands are crucial for performing everyday activities and remaining independent. Rachel’s goal is to find simple, cost-effective, and efficient ways for older adults to improve and maintain hand function on their own. She plans to combine elements of kinesiology and implementation science to bridge evidence-based practice in kinesiology with improved outcomes in everyday life. Rachel is also interested in learning more about data science and big datasets, and tools for managing and analyzing data.

Marc McCann
College of Pharmacy
Clinical Pharmacy and Translational Sciences
PhD Candidate
Marc McCann is pursuing his PhD in Clinical Pharmacy Translational Sciences. Marc became interested in precision health when he decided to continue his education in pursuit of translational research. He hopes the certificate program will foster the growth of a network of collaborators and mentors that can offer guidance and direction throughout his career, in addition to the graduate students in the program, who have vastly different research experiences and interests. Precision Health seminars will provide a space to stay current on advances in other fields and to learn from the experts driving the progress.

Jacqueline Muscat
College of Pharmacy
Doctor of Pharmacy
PharmD Candidate
Jacqueline Muscat is a second year Doctor of Pharmacy candidate with research experience in retrospective studies of antidepressant pharmacogenetics in patients with neurodevelopmental disorders. In completing the Precision Health Graduate Certificate Program and her PharmD degree, her hope is to pursue a career in healthcare leadership, where she can work to incorporate personalized medicine into a greater health system. She wants to be part of revolutionizing the healthcare field: making it more efficient, cost-effective, and beneficial to patients. After receiving her PharmD, she intends to work within a hospital system, pharmaceutical company, insurance group, or the Food and Drug Administration. She believes that encouraging organizations to adopt precision health ideologies and techniques will change healthcare for the better.

Logan Smith
College of Pharmacy
Clinical Pharmacy and Translational Sciences
PhD Student
Logan Smith is pursuing his PhD in Clinical Pharmacy Translational Sciences. With the Precision Health Graduate Certificate Program, he wants to take an interdisciplinary approach to his training and broaden his understanding of the challenges facing both the discovery and translation of clinical findings to healthcare. Exposure to diverse academic backgrounds will allow him to learn precision health applications that he may not see within his own program. He is interested in the factors surrounding medication selection and how to optimize these factors to select the most appropriate medication and dose for an individual patient. Ultimately, he hopes to run a precision health research program at an academic institution one day.