Major: Kinesiology – Health Sciences concentration
Major: Biosciences – Cell Biology and Genetics concentration
Minor: Medical Humanities
Certificate: Language and Intercultural Communication – Spanish

Ishaan, a Junior at Rice University, is double majoring in Kinesiology with a concentration in Health Sciences and in Biosciences with a concentration in Cell Biology and Genetics. He is also pursuing a minor in Medical Humanities and a certificate in Spanish. As he began taking various Health Sciences electives at Rice, Ishaan quickly fell in love with the major because it has allowed him to see past the biomedical basis of disease in order to understand aspects of medicine – such as holistic medicine, public health, cultural competence, and health disparities – that can help him be a more effective and understanding healthcare provider for his future patients.

Ishaan’s interest in health disparities stems from a high school shadowing experience where he heard firsthand accounts of various barriers to healthcare from minority patients that he met. In response, he conducted an independent research project using data from the SEER program to identify a number of sociodemographic factors that were associated with poor prognosis and worse 5-year survival rates for cervical cancer survivors in Georgia. He presented his findings at the 2020 Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium. This semester, he was excited to take the Dr. Diep’s HEAL 380 class where his final project further explored the existence of cancer health disparities between rural and urban communities in the United States.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ishaan became aware of the growing field of telemedicine and began looking into telemedicine-based solutions for health disparities and hospital outcomes. He performed research to identify healthcare facilities that could most benefit from telemedicine implementation. Because telemedicine enables physicians to get ahead of complications before they turn severe enough to require a hospital admission, his research positioned telehealth as a means to limit readmissions and therefore improve patient insurance risk scores. He received a first authorship for a paper describing this research, which has been accepted for publication in Telehealth and Medicine Today.

In the Fall of 2020, Ishaan began working at Helpsy Health, a mobile AI nurse startup that provide Telehealth, symptom management, and social support services to various communities, for the HEAL 379 internship course. In his role as a Health Technology Writer, he is responsible for securing grant funding and community partners to bolster the organization’s nonprofit services, which extends access to telehealth resources to underserved and disadvantaged populations. Most recently, Ishaan has been focused on securing federal and state funding for implementation of the Helpsy mobile application to support “return-to-work” programs and at-home COVID-19 care management of employees and frontline workers.

Ishaan is also heavily involved across campus and at his residential college. He is a founding member of the new Rice University Dance Marathon philanthropic organization, serving as its first Internal Director. RUDM has dedicated itself to fundraising thousands of dollars for Texas Children's Hospital, our local Miracle Network hospital, in support of its pediatric health services and research. Additionally, after serving as an O-Week Coordinator for Jones College O-Week 2020, he was recently selected as one of the new campus-wide Student Directors for O-Week 2021. At Jones College, he is currently serving as the Parliamentarian, as the Jones College RPC Representative, and as a Beer Bike Coordinator, and he has previously served as a Socials Coordinator and as a Floor Representative in the Jones College Cabinet. He enjoys taking advantage of every opportunity to organize events that build campus culture and bring the Rice community together.

After graduating from Rice, Ishaan plans on attending medical school as he strives to become a surgeon. He is confident that his research, internship, and academic experiences have laid a solid foundation for him as he continues working towards a future career in surgical medicine.