Aislinn McMillan
Aislinn is a rising second-year medical student at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, where she participates in the Global Health Academic Concentration program. Before matriculating at UCSD, Aislinn received her BA in Chemistry and a minor in Global Health Studies from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Between college and medical school, she spent a year working at the NIH. Her first immersive global health experience dates back to college, when she had the opportunity to conduct supervised field research in Tanzania, providing her with experience working across cultural borders of understanding. Aislinn currently works in Dr. Timothy Rodwell’s lab at UCSD, where she is involved in a large multi-national tuberculosis study. Aislinn is interested in a career as a physician-scientist, working with underserved populations domestically and internationally and pursuing research topics that address global health inequities. Outside of school, Aislinn enjoys taking advantage of the hiking trails and beaches that San Diego has to offer.
Performance of a Line Probe Assay Platform in Diagnosing Drug-resistant Extrapulmonary Tuberculosis and Bronchoalveolar Lavage Specimens
6/24/2019 - 8/16/2019
India
What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
The Kean Fellowship is providing me the opportunity to engage with health atmospheres that I strive to understand and work in. It is allowing me the opportunity to work on issues I am passionate about, to connect with physicians and researchers in fields of interest to me, and to further understand interventions from the laboratory to the clinical level. I am honored and grateful to be a Kean Fellowship recipient.
What do you anticipate learning?
My research in India this summer will allow me to gain understanding of what diagnostic work flow and laboratory research look like in a low resource, high disease burden setting. Moreover, shadowing on the tuberculosis wards will allow me insight into the lives of patients living with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis and the obstacles they face, putting the lab work into context. I anticipate gaining a greater understanding of all of the forces that play into a patient’s tuberculosis diagnosis in India. I will carry these learnings throughout my medical education and career as a physician, and I also hope to gain further insight into my career as a physician in global health.
What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
I aspire to be a physician because I want to commit myself to the quest for health equity. Through my studies of chemistry and global health, I learned about the field of tropical medicine, a field with such a diversity of neglected diseases that inflict great burdens and disproportionately affect certain populations. This summer, I am interested in learning about rapid tuberculosis diagnostic technologies that identify genes conferring drug resistance as attractive alternatives to conventional growth-based diagnostic methods. Such rapid diagnostics allow patients to begin receiving treatment immediately, avoid administration of toxic drugs that will not provide therapeutic benefit, and prevent further transmission of resistant strains.