High School Intern at SDSC Presents Research Outcomes at National Data Science Meeting
Published January 21, 2025
SDSC REHS Alum Rajan Tavathia traveled to the University of Michigan to present a student poster at the Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) Annual Meeting.
Upon completing an internship at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), which is a pillar of the School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences (SCIDS) at UC San Diego, Rajan Tavathia worked with a few high school student colleagues and completed a poster for the recent Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) Annual Meeting, which was held at the University of Michigan.
“Our study was a follow-on to the work we conducted while at SDSC in the Research Experience for High School (REHS) program – specifically, we further explored the relationship between healthcare accessibility and long COVID prevalence around the U.S.,” said Tavathia, a senior at Mount Carmel High School in San Diego. “We examined five key indicators: the percentage of uninsured adults, preventable hospital stays, mammography screening rates, flu vaccination rates and primary care provider (PCP) density.”
Tavathia said that the team used statistical methods like linear regression, decision trees and random forest models to discover trends suggesting that poorer healthcare access correlates with higher long COVID rates – although no statistically significant relationships were confirmed.
“We were proud that the students continued their work on their internship project to present at ADSA – it was a great experience for them,” said Christine Kirkpatrick, director of the Research Services Division at SDSC. “Their findings highlight the complex interplay of factors influencing long COVID and spark further discussion about the role of healthcare accessibility in disease outcomes.”
Additional poster authors were SDSC REHS participants Anika Tipirneni, Sumana Nandipati, Dylan Cairns and Neha Srinivasan. Benjamin Lee of Mount Carmel High School also contributed to the work.
