Driven by Data, Focused on Change

Each year, UTHealth Houston School of Public Health welcomes a new alumni class, culminating in over 10,000 trained graduates. Since 1967, each graduating class has established itself to support the school's mission of advancing public health for all. The School of Public Health welcomes its newest class of over 250 graduates from its five academic departments. 

Department of Biostatistics and Data Science 

Over the last two years leading up to her graduation, Master of Science student Kennedy Zinn transformed her initial curiosity about biostatistics and data science into a thorough understanding. 

For many students like Zinn she originally found the vastness of public health overwhelming; a challenge she was eager to master. "I took a gamble on myself when I came to this school," Zinn shared. Now, Zinn will complete her graduate studies from UTHealth Houston School of Public Health with a perfect GPA and a newfound confidence in herself and the field of data science. 

She completed the Gaining Equity in Training for Public Health Informatics and Technology, (GET PHIT) program, which prepares students for the interdisciplinary nature of health science. Students leverage community and institutional partnerships to provide hands-on skills in real-world settings. 

"The most rewarding part, which also happens to be the most challenging sometimes, is when I share the results with someone unfamiliar with the process, and it makes sense to them," she noted. The work of biostatisticians and data scientists is crucial to boots-on-the-ground researchers working alongside community partners. Collecting data is useless without the ability to translate findings to the communities they serve. She finds this a gratifying part of public health, being able to translate the work she has spent countless hours collecting for others. "I worked so hard to learn calculus, linear algebra, probability theory, all these big intimidating concepts, but that knowledge is useless if I cannot make the derived results accessible to others." 

After graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in cancer and genetics research.