Interdisciplinary growth opportunity

I believe that the essential feature of the Rochester Semester program is the opportunity for interdisciplinary growth. Through our internships, we can learn and create something exciting by thinking across boundaries.

My interdisciplinary growth experience

I have the pleasure of working with Dr. David Holmes, Director of the Biomedical Imaging Resource Core at Mayo Clinic. We are developing a proof-of-concept web application to anonymize (remove Patient Health Informations) and transfer clinical trials' medical images (DICOM files) to a centralized database.

During this experience, I was able to learn more about how clinical trials work. Still, I significantly spend time learning how medical images are created and how to manipulate them to extract critical information that I would then use to develop my solution.

I am still reflecting on how much I have learned from this interdisciplinary project, where I got to learn about the medical field while also growing as a computer scientist. Without the Rochester Semester program, I do not think that I would have been captivated by the intersection of health and informatics as I currently am.

Rochester Program's interdisciplinary growth opportunities

When I asked my fellow Computer Science and Data Science junior students from the Rochester Semester program, I learned that they are also working on exciting interdisciplinary projects. For example:


Sharayu Phanse is working for the Biomedical Imaging Resource Core at Mayo Clinic. She is developing a deep learning plug-in architecture for the Biomedical Image Analysis Software developed by Mayo Clinic called Analyze. She is exploring the intersection of Computer Science, Data Science, and Biomedical Science.

Sneha Verma is working for the Diversity Council at the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce. She works on a web and data project to centralize and efficiently display resources for multiple cultural and religious groups, LGBTQIA+, and communities of Rochester.

C M Nafi is working for the Radiology Informatics Lab at Mayo Clinic, programming Deep Learning Algorithms to engineer Medical-Imaging diagnostics.

Qian Yang is working for the Kern Center at Mayo Clinic, querying and retrieving the target multimorbidity cohorts from electronic medical records (EMR).

I believe that other students participating in the Rochester Program also have the opportunity to grow interdisciplinarily. I firmly believe that this is an extraordinary opportunity to explore one's major and learn how it can be enhanced by exploring and collaborating on other disciplines.

Through liberal art colleges like Luther College, we learn the importance of interdisciplinary learning. Thus, I encourage my fellow Luther students, whether you are a CS/DS or any other major, to apply for this incredible opportunity.