Student Spotlight: Clay Baker

Clay started his innovation journey in high school, where he co-founded a non-profit that provided personalized math tutoring to elementary students across North Carolina via interactive video platforms. During his undergraduate studies at Duke, he continued tutoring at DukeGIVE, a program partnered with GED/HiSET students at the Durham Literacy Center. Serving as President, Clay leveraged his previous virtual tutoring experience to help DukeGIVE successfully navigate the pandemic and serve their tutees with meaningful, virtual learning content.

Motivated by his own journey with Celiac Disease, he also joined Duke’s Bohórquez Laboratory to explore the gut-brain circuit. Clay used his undergraduate studies in computer science to establish a machine learning pipeline that analyzed behaviors in mice elicited by different gut stimuli.

Throughout college, Clay worked for a student-run bed rental company, Bull City Beds. The experience of managing core business operations, which included scheduling and executing hundreds of bed move-ins and move outs, fueled his entrepreneurial interest, leading Clay to intern at CliniSpan Health, a health tech startup focused on improving clinical trial diversity.

Upon graduating, Clay worked at UnitedHealth Group, spending time as a DevOps engineer and a clinical cybersecurity analyst through their Technology Development Program. Gaining exposure to engineering and cybersecurity shaped Clay’s perspective on care delivery optimization.

Since starting his first year in MIDP, Clay has enjoyed building relationships across Vanderbilt, especially with other MIDPers, and learning from their different backgrounds and experiences. He has appreciated the opportunity to engage with different faculty and speakers through the weekly forums. Clay currently serves as one of the Honor Council representatives for his class, along with working as a Finance Committee member for the Shade Tree Clinic. Clay aspires to have a career focused on innovation at the intersection of healthcare and technology to improve patient outcomes and is currently exploring surgical specialties.

Design Challenge Activities

Right Brain Activities to encourage discussion and Innovation have long been at the center of MIDP's mission. This month former MIDP Director, Dr. Reed Omary, brought world famous environmentalist, Tabitha Scott to help out with environmentally conscious problem solving in the health care space. She is the author of Trust Your Animal Instincts: Recharge Your Life and Ignite Your Power and a new book, Powering Change: The Hidden Resource to Unleash Potential, Productivity, and Profits. Students enjoyed lunch with Reed and Tabitha and devoted ingenuity to the need of an environmentally conscious medical building that can serve 400 women and oncology inpatients, as well as contain enough offices for relevant staff.

MIDP Forum Speakers February 2024

The MIDP's February forums were excellent this month. Current MIDP students (pictured below) Noah Thompson Orfield, PhD Sarah Ouadah, PhD and Emma Neal, PhD spoke about one of the most exciting parts of MIDP. In their fourth year, all MIDP students take the opportunity to engage in Industry Immersion. This is the option to work in industry using flex time, while still in Medical School. Students have participated in many industries in the past, but Noah, Emma and Sarah had the opportunity to spend time working with GE. Using knowledge gleaned in medical school to work in industry enriches our students' education and gives them a platform to apply their knowledge outside the world of medical education. Their talk was one part highlights of the experience and one part mentoring other students on the path to their Industry Immersion experience.

Bryan Marascalchi, MD is an assistant professor and anesthesiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Marascalchi is both a physician and successful entrepreneur. He is the founder of Pneumico, Inc and co-founder of Patient Premier, Inc. His talk about telling the story, finding the problem, making the fix affordable and getting advice about patents was beneficial and very entertaining.

Finally, Colleen O'Connor, the Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at the newly forming Alice L. Walton School of Medicine spoke to us about the motivation for a new medical school in Bentonville, Arkansas. With a long history at Duke University and the establishment of a sister medical school to Duke in Singapore, Dr. O'Connor is well up to this task. Her talk about developing the core values of a new medical school in a rural environment that boasts a rapidly growing population was inspiring and asked our students to think about the valuable question, "What has been most important to you in your medical education?".

Header Photography

Stunning photography as always, by Trent Rosenbloom, MD, Assistant Director of the MIDP. As we look hopefully towards spring and warmer evenings, we appreciate Dr. Rosenbloom catching our beautiful city at night!

The Green Leap

Let's see what former director, Reed Omary, MD is up to this month in his blog, The Green Leap: a blog about making healthcare sustainable. Talking with Alex Kinnebrew and telling us the latest news from the European Congress of Radiology meeting amongst other things are topics of the month.