'The Efforts Taken by HSE University to Make My Internship Format Online Are Laudable'

Johns Hopkins graduate Kayode Ahmed is interning at the Faculty. We talked to him about his career path, internship project, and hobbies:

I am a physician and scientist, and a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. My journey into medicine was partly inspired by a familial set-up of physicians and healthcare professionals, and my voracious inquisition into the world and practice of medicine. I have been involved in biomedical and biomechanics research under the distinguished mentorship of Professor Sergey Shevkoplyas, Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston. 

Internship

I remember subscribing to news alerts from HSE University a while ago just to keep abreast with updates as I have closely monitored some of its programs and events. On this lucky day, while checking an email from HSE University, I saw the opportunity to intern at the Faculty of Computer Science, and right away, I read through all the available departments and internship opportunities offered to see which one was the best fit for me. This period coincided with a course I was taking at Johns Hopkins, "Bioinformatics Tools for Genome Analysis". Having used a lot of bioinformatics tools broached by the program, I swiftly expressed my interest in the "Learning for Mass Spectrometry Data Identification" research project at the Laboratory on AI for Computational Biology under the supervision of Professor Attila Kertesz-Farkas.

The scope of the project encompasses the use of machine learning and AI to appraise biological data. This is quite useful in a field like proteomics where proteome changes that accompany diseases without clear or unknown pathogenesis can be better investigated at the level of protein expression rather than genetic changes, as is the case with multiple sclerosis. The novel potential of using such an approach to explicate unknown relationships implicated in the pathogenesis/pathophysiology of diseases is one with scientific and clinical applications.

I have been eased into the intricacies involved in using such an approach by Professor Kertesz-Farkas, with whom I will complete my internship. While my exposure to the field of computer science and statistics has helped me utilize tools like R, Python C#, etc, I am very determined and committed to exploring and learning new skills through practice and innovation – which I anticipate garnering following completion of my internship at HSE University. 

The current and ongoing precarious situation of the Covid-19 pandemic has seen learning modes change from an in-person format to an online or hybrid format. Although nothing compares to an in-person intern experience in my humble opinion, the efforts taken by HSE University to make my internship format online in providing me with all the relevant tools are extremely laudable and shows the determined efforts put in place by the leadership of HSE University to ensure a continuous learning experience despite the challenging situation of the pandemic. Hats off!

A bit about myself

I love jazz music and I am an intermediate jazz pianist. I currently do more listening than playing jazz music due to my packed work/study schedule. I also love travelling for jazz festivals with my favourite places being New Orleans, Louisiana, and Miami. I go swimming very often and play sports like soccer, tennis and basketball recreationally. While I love to study across different study materials or genres,  an area of applied mathematics I have fallen in love with is geometric fractals!