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Aastha Chandak | Carter Barger |
This year’s UNMC Presidential Graduate Fellows are:
Aastha Chandak, of Mumbai, India, a Ph.D. student in health services research, administration and policy.
In her pursuit of a doctoral degree from the College of Public Health at UNMC, Chandak has contributed to the field of health services research through 11 co-authored publications, two as first author. Through survey development and qualitative interviews, Chandak examines the oral health and oncology workforces in Nebraska, working with patient survey data, large health care claims databases and administrative databases as a research assistant and principal investigator.
Over the summer, Chandak gained industrial research experience as a global health economics and outcomes research intern at Biogen in Cambridge, Mass. There, she worked on research design and analysis of real-world evidence data, examining patient-reported outcomes in the multiple sclerosis therapeutic area. She also conducted a systematic literature review on cost-effectiveness models in the inflammatory bowel disease therapeutic area.
Chandak has received research funding for two projects focusing on access to care and health outcomes. After graduating from her Ph.D. program, Chandak hopes to contribute to strategic, evidence-based decision making through data-driven research.
Carter Barger, of Sioux City, Iowa, a Ph.D. student in cancer research.
Barger received his B.S. in microbiology from the University of Iowa and an M.S. in clinical laboratory sciences from Rush University before coming to UNMC. The curriculum at Rush and clinical rotations at Northwestern Memorial Hospital introduced Barger to molecular diagnostics, resulting in his pursuit of a cancer epigenetics research project in molecular oncology.
Following graduation, he worked as a medical technologist in molecular diagnostics at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System and the Denver VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System. Barger has been a graduate research assistant at the Eppley Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases since 2012, where his doctoral dissertation focuses on the genetic determinants of ovarian cancer. He has published in several journals and has presented at national meetings.
His long-term career goals are to become a board-certified clinical molecular genetics laboratory director and to conduct research toward translating genomics into molecular diagnostics. Barger plans to pursue postdoctoral training in cancer genetics and genomics followed by a fellowship in clinical molecular genetics.