Updates

April 6, 2024

Yet another great year of illustrating for this highly regarded and informative medical review series. Thank you so much to all the expert collaborators, content writers, editors, managers, and junior illustrators involved in the creation of this newest edition. But my amazing illustrator colleague Rachael Joy deserves a massive shout out in particular for creating so many high-quality illustrations that are consistently beautiful and precise.

As an Illustrator for the 34th edition of the First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 guidebook, I’m continuing to push myself to create better illustrations with each year. This year I incorporated a higher degree of anatomy, perspective, and design layout than ever before. I’ve highlighted a couple of my personal favorite pieces I created for this edition to the side. As always, this experience leaves me excited to create even more biomedical illustrations in the future.

January 26, 2023

This year was very busy and very fulfilling. I worked as a Junior Editor again, this time for the 11th edition of the First Aid for the USMLE Step 2 CK guidebook. The format for scoring the USMLE exams recently changed, so we put a lot of effort into updating this newest edition accordingly, with TONS of new illustrations added in. Yet again, the team really outdid itself to implement so much new high-quality content.

In addition to being an editor, I also acted as an official Illustrator this year, for both the book mentioned above, as well as the 33rd edition of the First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 guidebook. I’m particularly proud of my contributions to these books this year, as this was the first year my illustrations were directly placed into the book, without any additional editing. It’s been such a gratifying experience, and further ignites my passion for biomedical illustration. I’ve highlighted a couple of my personal favorite pieces I created for these editions to the side.

January 20, 2022

Last year I worked on the First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 guidebook series as a Contributing Illustration Author, and this year I was promoted to Junior Editor for the 32nd edition!

I was responsible for managing a team of medical students during the creation of over 100 high-quality illustrations. This entailed keeping my team on a set schedule, becoming acquainted with a wide range of medical topics, and providing guidance and feedback to my team on how to improve an illustration’s organization, readability, narrative, and accuracy. During this time I also collaborated with a number of medical residents and board-certified medical experts to ensure the high level of accuracy essential to medical education.

Our whole team did a phenomenal job this year; it was a pleasure getting to work with such talented individuals to create this year’s material. I always strive to improve the quality of work upon each project, and I strongly feel we achieved that objective with this year’s edition.

January 11, 2021

I didn’t want to make any premature announcements about my involvement while I was working on it last year, but the 31st edition of the First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 Guidebook has been published and I’m credited as a Contributing Illustration Author!

I contributed to creating brand new illustrations as well as editing existing illustrations. I’m very proud of the work not only myself but the entire team put into making the material more accessible to medical students. Given my educational background I contributed most to the Biochemistry chapter, but also assisted with Immunology, Pathology, Pharmacology, Gastrointestinal, Musculoskeletal, Psychiatry, and Respiratory.

It was a very rewarding experience and I learned a ton about how editors coordinate teams, as well as stylistic and consistency considerations and how to format illustrations for publication.

October 21, 2020

I’m thrilled to say I have successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis,

“The Polyadenosine RNA Binding Protein ZC3H14 is Required in Mice for Proper Working Memory, Synaptosomal Composition, and Dendritic Spine Density and Morphology”

This has been a long and hard journey, but also so rewarding and I feel proud of everything I’ve put into this research project over the last 7 years. My thesis is available here for anyone that would like to take a closer look.

Thank you to everyone that was able to attend and to all the support I’ve received from my committee, colleagues, friends, and family.

September 9, 2020

Today is the first day of the AMI 2020 Webinar Series!

This will be the first time since 2016 that I’ll be able to attend this amazing series. I was fortunate enough to attend in 2016 when it was based in-person in Atlanta, but I couldn’t attend the following years while I was in the midst of my graduate school research.

This series takes place from September 9-October 8. There are a ton of speakers I’m looking forward to hearing from, including Alyssa Eckert, Sarah Gluschitz, Cameron Slayden, and Hillary Wilson, to name only a small handful!

March 31, 2020

Even though the Science Art Wonder (SAW) Event in Atlanta had to be postponed due to social distancing, I’ve still been working on my piece for it during the quarantine. It’s finally finished, I hope it can still be physically presented in its full poster size later on.

A huge thank you to the SAW leadership and my research partner Dr. Rita Nahta, this project has been SO rewarding to work on. Additionally, this piece has the most amount of time devoted towards creating elements in Photoshop than any other piece thus far.

March 11, 2020

I’ve received unfortunate news that the Atlanta Science Festival has been cancelled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a completely understandable decision in the interest of public health. It is important to be mindful of preventative measures we can take to reduce the risk of infection; not only to maintain your own personal health, but to minimize the risk of spreading the virus to individuals who could be put at significant risk.

This would’ve been the third year I participated in ASF, as a part of the Science Art Wonder Initiative. Hopefully the participants will be able to showcase their hard work in a future exhibition, updates to come as we all work towards suppressing COVID-19 activity.

February 8, 2020

Attended the 2nd Annual Southeastern Medical Illustration (SEMI) Meeting today. The presentations were amazing and I met so many wonderful people!

Big thank you to Brad Gilleland and the University of Georgia for putting this fantastic meeting together. I learned so much about new cutting edge technologies in the visual communication field.