(Clockwise from top left: Jenna Becker, Sravya Chary, Vrushab Gowda, Abe Sutton, Sunnie Ning, Laura Karas)
We are so excited to welcome a new group of Student Fellows to the Petrie-Flom Center family. These six students are a fantastic cohort of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics scholars who join us from Harvard Law School and the HMS Center for Bioethics. While we cannot physically welcome our fellows this year, we are excited to provide them with a robust virtual fellowship.
They each will undertake a year-long research project with mentorship from Center faculty and affiliates, and also will blog here at Bill of Health regularly. Keep an eye out for their bylines!
Jenna Becker is a second year law student. Her research interests include the regulation of medical software and technologies. Prior to law school, Jenna worked as a technical analyst for a healthcare software company, advising healthcare systems around the U.S. on their implementation and use of electronic medical records. She engaged in computational biophysics research while at the University of Wisconsin. Her research project will focus on regulation and governance of healthcare artificial intelligence outside of the FDA’s authority.
Sravya Chary joins the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School from the graduate program in bioethics at Harvard Medical School. She has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for the past two years. Sravya is currently a Data Architect supporting the finance and market access teams. Her research interests include Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement models, commercial formulary strategy, healthcare finance, and research ethics. Her research project will evaluate hydroxychloroquine as a case study for establishing new risk/benefit guidelines for revoking emergency use authorizations.
Vrushab Gowda is a third year law student, as well as an MD candidate at University of North Carolina. He has previously served on the masthead of Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, and has been published in medical literature. His scholarly interests include the legal, regulatory, and ethical dimensions of digital health. His research project will focus on obstacles to telemedicine, which have been brought to light during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Laura Karas is a second year law student and a licensed physician. Laura conducted health policy research with the team of Professor Gerard Anderson at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. At HLS, Laura serves as an editor of the Harvard Law Review and has been published in scholarly journals. Her research interests include healthcare antitrust, conflict of interest management within the medical profession, and balancing individual rights and the public good in measures designed to foster public health. Laura’s research project will explore the impact of HIPAA authorizations in patient support program enrollment on patients and drug makers.
Sunnie Ning is a third year law student. Sunnie’s academic interests include patent law, IP and innovation policy, and genetic privacy. Her research project aims to compare and contrast different solutions to solving the problem posed by the patent system, such as licensing and patent pooling, in the context of COVID-19.
Abraham Sutton is a second year law student. He is interested in policy shifts that empower and incentivize the private sector to improve health outcomes and lower costs. Specifically, Abe is interested in the shift to paying-for-value within Medicare and broader changes to increase choice and competition in health care markets to place Americans in control of their own care. He has co-authored op-eds in The Hill and RealClear Politics, in addition to co-authoring white papers for The Cicero Institute and Day One Project. His research project will focus on understanding the statutory limits on organ procurement.