Major: Kinesiology - Health Sciences concentration
Minor: Global Health Technologies

Sanika Rane is in her 3rd year at Rice University. She is majoring in Kinesiology, concentrating in Health Sciences, and she is minoring in Global Health Technologies. During her time here, she has become more passionate about public health and global health, especially maternal health and infant health. Much of her experience helps her develop this passion: she conducts research with Project Break Free, a project within the Biobehavioral Mechanisms Explaining Disparities (BMED) Lab at the Biosciences Research Collaborative (BRC), on the physiological effects and the psychological impacts of quitting smoking in African-American smokers; she currently serves as the teaching assistant for HEAL 103: Nutrition; and she enjoyed working on her Global Health Technologies project, SiLow, a cost-effective alternative to treat gastroschisis in low-resource settings - the project won first place at last year's George R. Brown School of Engineering Design Showcase. For her work in global health innovation this year, Sanika was awarded with the Stronger Scholarship from Healthline Magazine & National Organization of Rare Diseases and the Roman Jax Nguyen Scholarship from Avery's Angels Gastroschisis Foundation.

Sanika is also heavily involved on campus. She is a member of the Student Admission Council Executive Board as a Tour Guide Chair. She is also involved with Impact, a leadership program centered around a spring retreat, as both a Participant attending the retreat in the past and a Staffer mentoring at the retreat this year. She also works as a Lead Student Computing Consultant in the Rice Office of Information Technology's Help Desk where she helps students, faculty, and staff with technical issues.

As a Rice-Baylor Medical Scholar, Sanika plans on attending Baylor School of Medicine after graduation in 2020 to earn her M.D. She plans on practicing as a physician and, during her career, she aims to incorporate her passion for public health and global health, so she is excited to apply everything she has learned here while she works as a physician.