Sanam Bhatia is a rising second year medical student at Weill Cornell. She majored in Public Health Studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she worked as a research assistant on a global health survey studying nutrition, water and sanitation, and contraception use in eleven countries. This summer, through the Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine Summer Scholars in Aging Research Program (GPS) program, she plans to study the relationship between food insecurity and sarcopenia among older adults with HIV, in order to better understand how socioeconomic processes impact physical health among vulnerable populations.
Thomas Heslop is a Brooklyn native and recent Howard University graduate with Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance who has received a Travelers Summer Research Fellowship. This summer, he will be working on a statewide survey of long-term survivors with HIV, people aging with HIV, and HIV providers, to determine barriers to care and recommendations for overcoming those barriers. He will also be investigating medical and social challenges faced by long term survivors living with perinatally contracted HIV compared to those who contracted it later in their life. In the future, he aims to apply for medical school and leverage his business background to open a practice in his neighborhood, Brownsville.
Emma Chang is a fifth year student at the University of Michigan who also has received a Travelers Summer Research Fellowship. She will be doing a literature review on mitochondrial DNA in people with HIV.