Week 1 Blog

Hi there! This week I split my time between my research project and my internship. While focusing on my own research, I looked at government reports detailing the magnitude of the impact of Diabetes in the United States. The reports I looked at gave me a perspective regarding the amount of involvement and influence the federal government has over the specific health policies relating to the pricing of insulin and the treatment of diseases like diabetes. In addition, I familiarized myself with specific precedent cases relating to the pricing of medications within the United States. 

For my internship I am assisting Dr. Naoru’s project to create a kidney trafficking database, which is funded by the NSF (National Science Foundation). While the UN [United Nations] has access to both human sex and drug trafficking databases there currently isn’t an available database for human organ trafficking. Dr. Naoru’s work focuses on extracting data from newspaper articles using machine learning AI. For the past week I have been familiarizing myself with the work: the process of extracting data and the modification of the AI algorithm. I look forward to doing more work on this topic and am excited to learn more.