SPH 481 - Public Health Capstone
Winter 2024
This capstone was the most direct chance I’ve had to work with a community organization to effect a real health change in Washington State. Not only did I have to learn about the community I was serving in order to provide the most relevant advice that was needed, but I also had to constantly review our work with our community partners to ensure it was what they wanted from our infographics. This collaboration was a way for us to center our work on the communities we serve, which is a central component to what I want to do in the future as a community-oriented physician.
HONORS 220: Safety Net Hospitals
Fall 2023
I’ve felt that my journey through medicine has been full of twists and turns that induce so much anxiety about not doing the premed path “the right way.” While I do find the human body (and especially the brain) fascinating along with the thrill of discovery in research, I’ve found a relatively different niche within science that appeals to me. Along with much of my extracurricular time being devoted to neuroscience outreach over clinical research, I’ve found I have a strong passion for the interdisciplinary nature of the medical system. I love learning about and incorporating healthcare systems, social determinants of health, and systematic issues in poverty and inequity to find a way to address health not only of an individual, but of whole communities. That’s why I think I loved this course so much, as it gave me some reassurance that this is something that can exist (and is very much needed) from a physician perspective. With this course being led by an actual practicing physician, Dr. Maralyssa Bann, I’ve had the chance to see how she has incorporated these areas of knowledge into her practice and teaching at an undergraduate level. In this class we were also given the freedom to delve deep into a population served by safety net hospitals, which I chose Asian Americans to be my population. I learned so much about the depth of what makes healthcare effective/ineffective, and am truly grateful to have had this experience with such a unique class.
MCAT Studying
Summer 2023
This summer might have been the most grueling few months academically I have ever had in my life. With the weight of medical school admissions on my shoulders, it felt crushing at times to have to review multiple years worth of information from biology, chemistry, biochemistry, organic chemistry, physics, math, psychology, and sociology all within three months. I did hundreds of flashcards on Anki every day through the summer, I read through over 2000 pages of content review, I completed thousands more practice problems online, and took 5 full AAMC practice exams in preparation. Not to mention many more hours of coping with my fellow MCAT test takers throughout the summer. While this was absolutely an unprecedented amount of studying to me, I will still say that I was able to comfortably enjoy relaxing in the summer, or at least more so than during a regular school year. I was able to meet up with old high school friends, shadow some really cool medical cases, and go on a few trips with my friends and family. Through all of this, I think I was reminded of the major importance of my own mental health throughout any stressful process. I think in order for me to study my best, I must be in the right mindset, and as such taking care of myself is just as important to my end result as actually studying. I want to keep this in mind as I continue down my journey in medicine, reminding myself that while times may get hard, I will not sacrifice my own wellbeing for the good of both myself and those I care for.
SPH 481 - From Research to Policy
Winter 2023
If there is anything that I have learned from the public health sequence, it is that much of the problems we have in modern health are inevitably a result of decisions made by its leadership. This is why I appreciated having this class on health policy analysis, enabling me to connect my studies more to real life events. Throughout this quarter, I worked in a team of undergraduates to analyze a specific real life policy bill, in our case SB 5009, which if passed would require parental approval before a student receives comprehensive sexual health education. While we all had strong feelings about this bill, our objective was to analyze this in a non-partisan fashion, presenting only factual and relevant information so that policymakers would theoretically be able to read this brief and have the facts to make a proper decision with their constituents in mind. We were able to analyze a broad range of multidisciplinary aspects from economic impact, ethical implications, and social justice related consequences.
PHYS 115 - Physics in Neuroscience
Winter 2023
Website Link: https://brandonwu574.wixsite.com/physics-in-neuroscie
Neuroscience was surely a theme throughout this quarter, with my next project being focused on my electricity and magnetism physics class. I would argue that this was the best possible class I could have taken concurrently with NEUSCI 301 as it perfectly lined up with electrophysiology concepts that I didn’t previously expect. More specifically, we learned in NEUSCI 301 that neurons act like real life wire circuits, with ion channels/concentrations/flow on either side of the membrane acting as resistors and capacitors in a current. However, when we learned this I barely understood what a capacitor was until we covered it in PHYS 115. As such, I decided to expand this knowledge further in a website under the supervision of Professor Usama al-Binni, linking the neural mechanisms of neuroscience to the boundaries of physics. The parallels that I found between these two fields was incredible to learn about myself, and I hope that this resource can continue to help future physics and neuroscience students understand the fascinating interdisciplinary connections in what they are studying.
NEUSCI 301 - Real life action potentials!
Winter 2023
Although much of my time in college has been devoted to advocating for publicly accessible and understandable neuroscience education in Grey Matters Journal, it is still easy at times to be intimidated by what we are actually able to do in the field. That’s why I appreciated the lab opportunities provided in this class so much. My favorite experiment was focused on analyzing the action potentials (or electrical signals) traveling down the nerves of a live earthworm via extracellular recording on electrodes at either end of the worm. I can’t explain in words the amazement or satisfaction of getting real life recordings from these labs, seeing what I read about in textbooks on my screen from an experiment. Furthermore, these labs taught me some incredible resilience, as writing lab reports throughout this quarter have been some of the most difficult things I have done throughout my years in college, which is why the final product of this lab report was so special to me. It also reminded me of the applicability of coding within different contexts, as demonstrated by the visualizations I created to go along this report.
SPH 480 and HONORS 210 - Comparing Research Methods
Fall 2022
Research has played a significant role in my college experience, from writing literature reviews to working in a lab. However, these two courses in particular between my public health sequence and my honors courses has revealed a particularly interesting illustration to me of the breadth of what research can look like. In SPH 480, I worked with a team of students to create a cross sectional study with real college student responses to determine the relationship between sleep quality and anxiety. In H210, I did a rather unique qualitative study on defining marching band as a discourse community by interviewing a few of my fellow members in the marching band and having them have a real time discussion putting together a halftime show while I analyzed their interactions with one another. I think this unique exposure to research styles has not only influenced what I consider to be research, but also the unique strengths and weaknesses of each type. For example, in SPH 480 I had significant difficulties in finding enough people to respond to our survey to get statistically significant results. However, in H210, I had much more trouble trying to figure out how I could tangibly interpret solely qualitative data. I hope to use these unique interactions in my future research efforts!
CSE 163 - Analyzing Heart Disease and Air Pollution
Summer 2022
Computer science is something that I used to despise. This was partially because of bad past experiences with courses and just the general frustration of getting some bits of code to work. However, the strange thing is that over the course of the last couple years, it’s become something that I enjoy – so much so that I am taking this sequence (CSE 160-163) without it really counting towards anything in my degree. And I think that this class was a perfect example of explaining why that passion arose, more specifically in its applicability to my fields. Most of the classes I have enjoyed have been fields that are broad and connective rather than narrow. In this case, I spent the second half of this class working on a final project that analyzed the relationship between heart disease and air pollution and translated it into actionable policy recommendations using real world data. In this way, we incorporated fields from medicine, public health, and public policy from beginning to end, from data to policy. This was incredibly satisfying and empowering to know that with the relatively limited knowledge of coding I have, I was able to make such a comprehensive report.
SPH 381 - Environmental Justice in Vietnam
Spring 2022
Throughout this class I learned tons of different forms of environmental justice ranging from redlining, air pollution, case studies like in Flint, Michigan, and more. I decided to take a look at waste dumping as an international issue for my final project, which you can view to the left.
One thing from making this presentation that particularly stuck out to me (besides how stressful self-recording can be) was that for however much we complain about problems that affect us directly, as a nation we fail to observe the disastrous impacts we are having on communities outside of our country. This mindset of spending 90% of our discussion nationally on our own political matters instead of realizing that we are literally directly causing the deaths of thousands of people overseas in very preventable ways just goes to show the drastic changes that we need to make not only as public health practitioners, but also as ethical human beings.
SPH 380 - Physician Suicide
Winter 2022
In addition to literature reviews similar to my work in Grey Matters Journal, SPH 380 was the first class I've taken that I've had the opportunity to explore two different forms of public health communication: public service announcements and op-eds (shown below). The topic I chose to explore was mental illness among healthcare workers by creating an infographic that could both educate the public and provide useful resources to people who need it. As someone who is hoping to enter the medical field, I believe it is important to also thoroughly understand the rougher sides of medicine. We see doctors as the people we go to for help, but because of this there is a stigma among both the general and medical community against reaching out for support when the doctors themselves need it. The op-ed that is linked to the right is the first opinion piece I have ever wrote, which I submitted to the Seattle Times and was (expectedly) rejected, but having gone through the process of creating it and submitting gave me a much better idea of how information is given to the public. Overall, the work I did in these projects showed that there are issues in medicine beyond finding treatments for patients, but also looking beyond to help the doctors, administrators, nurses, and other staff as it is needed.
PSYCH 202 - Understanding Addiction
Summer 2021
For my PSYCH 202 "Biopsychology in the world" project, we were given the freedom to explore any topic of our choosing. I chose drug addiction and found many interesting connections ranging from topics in public health, neuroscience, bioethics, law enforcement, and social services. The issues I studied most heavily consisted of difficult and polarizing topics, such as safe injection sites and the stark contrast between nearly unanimous opinions of necessary change to social services in published research compared to the general public's hesitancy for change despite the growing problem.
There were a lot of issues that I discussed in the summaries to the right, but on of the fundamental points was how drug addiction in the US is treated as a law enforcement problem, when in reality it should be faced as a public health problem no different from how we drastically decreased smoking habits in the last few decades. However, the political system that we have has a heavy hand in public health, which is becoming a recurring theme throughout much of my studies.
Socioeconomic Status and Neuroscience
Spring 2021
I had my first experience as an author for Grey Matters last fall, and I decided to continue it this quarter. My topic this time was a bit more directly interdisciplinary, looking at neural development not just as a biological result, but rather a social result that can be affected by the living conditions that someone grows up with. I was very pleased that the essay this time around was far more streamlined than my first as I am now more used to the production process, searching literature, and writing effectively/concisely. Yet I do recall struggling not on the body or conclusion of my essay, but rather on the introduction. I wrote over 5 different versions, most of which ending up being what I described as too "cringy" to keep. Although I am satisfied with the introduction that I ended up with and am happy that I stuck with it!
Something else I want to note is how great it has been working with a production group with Grey Matters. As an author, I am also put into a group with a core editor supported by two general editors and an artist to illustrate my work. I've gotten the chance to work with many different people who give different types of advice and communicate in different ways. As such, I believe working with Grey Matters has not only enhanced my writing abilities, but also in working as a team for a high quality polished product.
CHEM 165 - Chemistry and... Music?
Spring 2021
Check out the website here:
https://brandonwu574.wixsite.com/artinscience
I am a premed who plays in the marching band, but generally these two realms of hard science and music do not overlap significantly in terms of academics, despite both of them being very engaging to me individually. It was for this reason that I was surprised at the connection between chemistry and music for our CHEM 165 art in science project. As stated in our website that I created with EJ Brannan, music and chemistry share a common language: mathematics. It's the reason the words "resonance", "frequency", and "harmonics" are often used in both disciplines. Our exploration found that not only are connections like this endlessly fascinating, but also can be a vital way to present information in a new way that appeals to more students.
HONORS 222 - Politics and Pain Management
Spring 2021
The longest essay that I have ever written was a 10 page paper on parrot conservation for AP environmental science. Even that essay I had two weeks to complete. As such, this essay for my HONORS 222A class, "Pain", was definitely one of my greatest challenges this quarter. I had decided a month prior that I wanted to base my essay around the political basis of pain, but due to other schoolwork and events, I wasn't able to start my essay until very late in the quarter. In retrospect, I definitely wish I had started it earlier and taken some time away from studying in my other classes. Regardless, the silver lining for me is that I was able to discipline myself to work continuously on an essay, which I'm hoping will assist my ability to write efficiently when I inevitably have other challenging deadlines in the future.
From an academic standpoint, this paper was a perfect example of why this was an interdisciplinary honors class. Politics and medicine are rarely emphasized within the same light despite them having profound impacts on each other, demonstrating the need for interdisciplinary thinking and not just specialized knowledge. This class as a whole was also just absolutely amazing in this aspect, hitting on biological, social, societal, and psychological realms. We even had a week on the connection between pain and literature! All in all, I am very glad that I took this class with Dr. Loeser and Dr. Mayer.
HONORS 391 - Understanding equity in medical care through the story of Henrietta Lacks
Winter 2021
It's easy to see the more stereotypical sides of medicine. Complicated surgeries, fascinating laboratory research, and allure of top medical schools can often take the stage. This is why I've found this interest in some of the lesser discussed topics in medicine - more specifically the story and questions brought about by the story of Henrietta Lacks. What alarms me is the tendency for professionals, oftentimes researchers, to prioritize discovery while sacrificing the health of their patients. In this case, Henrietta Lacks had her cancerous cells taken without her knowledge to be used in research, still used today and known as HeLa cells. However, she did not receive proper care and ultimately died as a result. This along with the future experiences of her family demonstrate a real problem in medicine that I hope to keep in mind as I continue in my medical journey.
The Neuroscience of Aphantasia
Fall 2020
Entering college away from campus, I never would have expected to be able to dive into scientific literature in my first quarter. However, I quickly discovered that there are so many opportunities for me to get involved, I just needed to reach out. One of my primary interests has always been how the brain works, so a neuroscience club seemed like a good fit. I submitted an article proposal to Grey Matters Journal about a mental condition called aphantasia, which is the inability to mentally visualize. To my surprise, it was accepted! I've now spent the last couple months working on my first research article, proving to myself that I don't have to wait to get involved at the University of Washington.
ENGL 182 - Virtual Music Education
Fall 2020
Throughout high school, I got some experience working with podcasts for Truthlines.com. From this familiarity, I was excited to hear that for my ENGL 182 class (Multimodal Composition), a podcast was an option for our final project. Working together with Jaden Wang, we researched the implications of musical EdTech both within and outside of the context of COVID-19. It was especially rewarding to reconnect to our previous high school orchestra/band directors for interviews that are included in Episode 2. To see the additional transcripts, feel free to visit our website linked here. I have loved this class because it has taught me how to portray information in a more modern format that appeals to people who don't have the time for lengthy formal essays.