By: Marielle Boutin
As many graduate students can attest, defending a PhD is a surreal feeling. Vinyas Harish, a clinician-scientist in training and MD/PhD candidate at the University of Toronto, experienced this feeling when the culmination of years of hard work led to him seeing his dissertation in print. He had effectively closed the chapter on his experience as a student in the Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research (CEHCR) program at IHPME.
“It’s pretty remarkable to see it manifested as something you can hold in your hand,” says Harish. “My fiancée had it printed out as a surprise for my convocation. Seeing it there for the first time surrounded by friends and family who helped me get through my PhD journey was special.”
Since submitting his thesis in Fall of 2023, Harish has been completing his MD and exploring how his PhD studies can be applied in clinical practice.
“It has definitely been challenging balancing these two roles,” says Harish. “Clerkship is the period of core clinical rotations when students learn to how to function as a part of the medical team. It is a steep learning curve, but seeing how much I have grown over the past year has been rewarding.”
As he’s progressed beyond his PhD studies, Harish has come to value the discussions and assessments of research studies when making clinical decisions, factors that always influenced his research during his time in the CEHCR program.
His thesis work explored the role of digital epidemiology and how it can be used to better respond to emergencies through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic using qualitative studies, geospatial modeling, and machine learning.
His interest in emergency preparedness grew during his time with BlueDot, a startup founded by Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease physician at Unity Health Toronto, that leverages AI to track and predict infectious disease risks. Dr. Khan also co-supervised Harish’s PhD with Dr. Laura Rosella.
As he completes his clinical rotations across the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN) hospitals, Harish is reminded of his time in the CEHCR program, which he says laid the foundation for how he views clinical practice and patient care, owing to its collaborative nature and comprehensive approach to clinical epidemiology.
“I had a great experience in the CEHCR program,” says Harish. “I learned a lot from my classmates, the majority of which were practicing physicians across TAHSN. I think the ability to learn from each other and help shape research that ultimately touches patient care across so many different areas of medicine is a real strength of the program. As I now complete clinical rotations across the TAHSN hospitals, it is always nice to see familiar faces from CEHCR on the wards!”
Harish’s PhD journey was also punctuated by experiences extending out of the classroom, where he had the opportunity to collaborate on projects that provided him with meaningful outlets for practical knowledge application.
He was part of a team, comprised of members from Layer 6 AI, a research lab owned by The Toronto-Dominion Bank, and Dr. Rosella’s Population Health Analytics Laboratory, who explored the use of machine learning models to predict the onset of and complications caused by diabetes in Ontarians.
He also collaborated with Dr. Oliver Brady and a team of researchers from across the globe to study the spread of dengue in Mexico and Brazil using machine learning, the results of which were published in Nature Communications and presented at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Institute for Disease Modelling in Seattle.
Now, Harish is applying his acquired knowledge as he learns how to care for patients and is looking forward to applying for residency in Fall 2024.
Looking ahead, he is focused on building a career that balances clinical practice, scientific discovery, and innovation, with the hope of one day teaching future generations of students.
“At the end of the day, I think it’s really important to pay forward the support that I benefited from so much.”
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Marielle Boutin
Email Address: ihpme.communications@utoronto.ca