Jazmin Washington, an undergraduate student from Agnes Scott College (ASC), is currently enrolled in the ISyE Summer Undergraduate Research Scholars Program – a 10-week program aimed at engaging prospective students to explore research topics under the guidance and support of an ISyE faculty mentor. 

Intrigued by the program’s mission, Jazmin’s connection with Georgia Tech’s Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) school, began with an unexpected yet exciting email from her assistant director Dr. Jessamyn Doan Ewing. After reviewing the opportunity, it stood out to Jazmin that the program was looking to amplify voices and resources for underrepresented groups in engineering.

With a chance to work with one of the top-ranked industrial engineering programs in the nation, Jazmin was excited to apply. Among Washington, the program welcomed an additional thirteen students who are focusing on various topics spanning algorithms, health conditions, and environmental impacts. 

With its second year underway, the program has scaled to support an additional round of students, nearly doubling the enrollment since establishing in 2023.

Evaluating Long-Term Diabetes Outcomes

Jazmin is working with ISyE Assistant Professor Dr. Shihao Yang, who is assisting her research that is dedicated to understanding long-term longitudinal treatment outcomes for diabetes diagnosed patients using Medicaid data claims or Electronic Health Records (EHR). 

With an interest in human needs, Washington is passionate about exploring challenges that have communal and societal influence in underserved populations, with the hopes of providing comprehensive solutions that stimulate generational advancement.

With a direct focus on individuals aged between 0 to 35 across all races in the Southeast United States from 2005 to 2018, Jazmin is hoping to identify severe health outcomes and disparities in disease management. 

“To further help identify disparities in healthcare or to suggest targeted interventions to implement in the future… we are doing a lot of data analysis to understand where these healthcare systems can improve in helping patients with diabetes.”

Her goal is to ultimately determine those outcomes and inform health agencies about gaps in diabetes care within the Medicaid population. Under Yang’s guidance, Washington has been able to make progressive steps towards identifying those gaps by learning new skills in SQL and Python, along with an increased understanding of database access and security through VPNs. 

“Dr. Yang emphasized that you don’t need to be a top student or have a PhD to learn this type of coding, as the learning part isn’t hard, but executing it within our system can be an exciting challenge.”

By examining treatment efficacy and developing proactive measures on future health issues for diabetes patients, they’re hoping to contribute towards building a better healthcare system. However, a significant obstacle they could face is creating and systemizing an automated loop program to sort through diverse electronic health records from multiple medical databases.

With each institution using different codes and labels for treatments, it further complicates the categorization process, and despite this, they are taking exponential steps through collaborative efforts with researchers from Emory University to create new solutions.

Dual Degree Dreams

Having completed three years at Agnes Scott College, Washington is looking forward to leveraging the 3-2 Dual Degree Program (DDP) offered between ASC and GT. This dual degree program offers students the opportunity to complete three years at their host school, and transfer to complete the last two years at another institution. 

With her application submitted to Georgia Tech, Jazmin is aiming to further her education in the engineering world.

Reflecting on her journey thus far, Washington expressed gratitude towards both institutions for committing to sharing resources, valuing collaboration, and inspiring students to explore their own diverse projects to make a difference. 

As she awaits her next steps at Georgia Tech, she hopes to build and inspire prospective students to discover their interests through new opportunities just like the ISyE Summer Undergraduate Research Scholars Program.

To learn more and read about previous and upcoming projects, view here.

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Copywriter: Camille Carpenter, Communications Manager