When Makayla Griffin ’23, ’24MSHI came to Bryant as a Biology undergrad, her career goal was to become a physician assistant; however, as she explored the profession through PA-related coursework and shadowing those already in the field, Griffin realized that the path wasn’t for her. Searching for an area of healthcare that felt rewarding, a new interest sparked when she signed up for “Computer Programming for the Sciences” — a course taught by Biological and Biomedical Sciences’ Professor Brian Blais, Ph.D.
“I found a liking to that side of the field,” says Griffin, eyes lighting up as she spoke about the course. “By end of spring in my junior year, I had pivoted.”
Griffin committed to Bryant during her junior year of high school when Bryant Athletics recruited her for the women’s soccer program. With the COVID-19 pandemic taking away one of her playing years, Griffin had a fifth year of sports eligibility and decided to play one final season with the Bulldogs; during that time, she took her interest in the computing side of healthcare to the next level by pursuing the university’s Master of Science in Healthcare Informatics.
That move has since propelled her into a data engineering career at Brown University Health.
Finding her passion through support
As an undergrad, the Massachusetts native quickly found that the School of Health and Behavioral Sciences’ small class sizes, faculty, and coursework were setting her up for post-graduation success. Taking advantage of available on-campus opportunities, Griffin spent one summer conducting research within the university’s Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program and, during the semester for three years, spent her free time tutoring. Assisting peers who visited the Academic Center for Excellence with chemistry, biology, physics, and calculus coursework questions was not only a rewarding experience but gave Griffin insight on other science courses she might want to take.
While her undergraduate science classes were great for individualized attention, Griffin found that Bryant’s Healthcare Informatics program offered more one-on-one support through its even smaller and focused class size. From courses like “Healthcare Operations and Systems” to “Population Health,” Griffin furthered her education when she landed an internship with Brown University Health through the help of Associate Professor of Healthcare Informatics Nafees Qamar, Ph.D.
“Learning theoretical concepts in the classroom was great, but having an internship was super helpful in getting that real-world experience,” Griffin says.
From internship to job offer
Starting her internship in the summer of 2024, Griffin worked under biostatisticians and learned about the health organization’s project development, data analysis processes, and large dataset evaluations. Performing data mining and analysis on large hospital datasets using R programming, Griffin regularly kept Qamar updated on how she was enjoying her internship. She shared that the work was interesting, but it wasn’t what she would want to do long term. Qamar encouraged her to ask about doing some work with SQL — a domain-specific language used to manage data.
Speaking with her supervisor, Griffin transitioned to working with one of the company’s data engineers and developed synthetic patient data using Python — specifically leveraging the Random and Faker libraries to simulate electronic health records.
“I fell in love with it,” Griffin says, expressing her satisfaction with finding a balance between programming and science.
Fulfilling her internship hours by the end of the summer, Griffin stayed on and continued the project into the fall. With support from her on-site supervisors, Griffin appreciated their check-ins to make sure she was still enjoying the work.
“They wanted me to learn what I wanted while setting me up for success,” Griffin says.
Graduating a semester early, Griffin completed her graduate career in December and received a job offer from Brown University Health. Applying her Bryant coursework to her role today, Griffin can regularly be found using SQL and Python. As a data engineer on a team of people who are in data management and biostatistician roles, Griffin hopes to hone more of those skills while bringing her expertise to the table.
“I love learning new things and finding different ways to solve problems through data,” Griffin says.
