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Aman- Folks, welcome back to another episode of the I AM GPH podcast. Today we have a very, very multifaceted individual, that's gonna be nothing short or fascinating in my eyes, at least so far, in the conversation I've had offline. I'm very excited to speak you. Rumi Chunara is an associate professor at NYU, where she's jointly appointed at the School of Global Public Health in bio stats and epidemiology, or as the local students over there like to call it, epi, and the Tandon School of Engineering in Computer Science. Yes, a public health and engineering collab. Her PhD is from Harvard MIT, Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and her BSE is from Caltech. Her research focuses on design and development of data science and machine learning methods to address challenges related to data and goals of public and population health, as well as fairness and ethics in design and use of data and algorithms embedded in social systems. She's one of the MIT technology review Innovators Under 35, NSF CAREER, Facebook Research, and Max Planck Sabbatical Award winner. In true Rumi Chunara fashion, she's also launching a new center, the center of Center for Health Data Science, which involves research, teaching, and other activities. With one of the multifaceted projects being NYU-Moi Data Science for Social Determinants, which is a collaboration with NYU and the university from Kenya. But we'll hop more into that through the interview. With that said, Rumi Chunara, welcome to the I AM GPH podcast.
Rumi Chunara- Thank you, Aman. I'm so excited to be here.
Aman- I'm glad to have you here. So why don't you start us off? That is... That is a short version of an intro, that can go on forever, and ever, and ever, and you have done so much. So for someone that is in such a unique position to be appointed at, jointly, at NYU Tandon and at the Global Public Health School, how does this cross-disciplinary perspective work for you, how does your brain work when you think of the world of public health and Tandon in your world?
Rumi Chunara- Yeah, that's a... It's a perfect topic to talk about. I get it a lot because it's not... It's not a common appointment to be in two schools, first of all, and two such somewhat different schools. But I think just like if we kind of look back at academics and stuff, the... The nature of these kind of disciplinary boundaries or different disciplines, hasn't always been the case, right? It's kind of evolve... You can look back and see over time, like why it's evolved that way. I mean, I kind of get that there's important parts to being able to create spaces where you delve deeply in certain topics or approaches, being able to evaluate people's work in certain realms. But at the same time, if we kind of look beyond these, kind of, in some ways, artificial boundaries, it kind of opens up a new realm, right? That's somewhat freeing, and gives us a lot of different perspective on things, perspective on one topic that might take knowledge from like a different... A different kind of set of knowledge. It might bring knowledge about a different toolkit that can be used in a certain way, and so it's very... It's intellectually very amazing. It's not easy, especially in the academic system, in that, of course, besides all of those challenges like checking the boxes in different... For different departments and whatnot, I think it's just been intellectually amazing and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Aman- There's a bunch of awesome stuff in there. What was that time when you checked your box? How did you decide that this is the multifaceted path I want to follow?
Rumi Chunara- Yeah. Okay, that's a great question. I feel in some ways, for me, it hasn't been like about, "Okay, I want to be multidisciplinary." Rather, I kind of just have a goal in mind, right? So kind of have this inner center, where it just relates to what are your... What's your... What things are important to you, what are your values, what's your value system? And that's kind of never wavered. So that being there and very strong, I just feel like, frankly, the next steps have been kind of, "Go far as..." I would go as far to say straightforward or obvious, meaning if I wanna get there, I will do what's necessary. And that... And if in those systems, you also think rigor is important, being careful about the approach, then at the same time, getting there becomes... It's challenging. It's not easy because you're bringing together different knowledge... Knowledge base from multiple spaces, you have to be well versed. But then it becomes possible. And I like this quote from this filmmaker, Mira Nair. I don't know her. Do you know her work?
Aman- No, but I'm about to learn about her.
Rumi Chunara- Okay. Yeah, yeah. So you could check out her films, which are, someone say, quite, they're quite revolutionary. But she said it in a nice way that, "In order to dismiss the rules, you must have the mastery of the rules." So you have to be able to speak the language in a way that you can then explain why you should push it aside. Yeah.
Aman- I love that quote. In order to dismiss the rules, you must find mastery of the rules. Is that it? Wow!
Rumi Chunara- Yeah.
Aman- Man. Okay, I'm gonna... I'm gonna ponder about that one for a while. Can you take me to the moment where you found out that for yourself specifically? So did you started with engineering and moved into... Into the public health world? What was that moment for you where you realized, "Oh! I'm curious about the public health world and I wanna take my skills that I have into this world?" What was... What was that for you?
Rumi Chunara- Yeah, I'm just thinking back. It didn't land directly. In college I was deciding what to study. I studied electrical engineering because I really liked physics, and I thought it was like more of an applied look at things, and frankly, I didn't know anything about it. But then I found myself drawn to, in the summers, working on projects. I always found myself drawn to problems related to health, in some ways. So I was always working on some engineering and health, that way. I found out about this graduate program, just because my... My kind of peers and colleagues had looked into, things, ahead of me, and I looked at what they were doing, and that was also very... It kind of equipped me to be confident, speaking multiple languages. So to be like an engineering student, working in the clinic as part of the requirements, or taking a course with medical students, and I got some comfort in that exposure. But you know what? That still wasn't the end of it. I mean, I learned a lot about clinical medicine, and during my research, during graduate school, I learned about... A lot about micro electro mechanical systems, if you really wanna get into it, and point of care sensing. That was great. But I still... I still didn't... I just realized like I wasn't an experimentalist. It didn't get me up every day. And so I further ventured in looking for what I should do, and landed in a post-doc position at a computational, epidemiology lab. And frankly, I was spending a lot of time, I liked research. But you know what area to go in. I liked the idea of kind of point of care sensing, which is what I was working on. And I watched a interesting TED Talk, with a gentleman named Larry Brilliant in it. I mean, his last name is Brilliant, so it speaks for itself. But he was part of the WHO smallpox team, when smallpox was eradicated, and they... And during his TED Talk, he had this mantra, which was, early detection, early response. So basically a smallpox is so contagious, that they just had to get really quick information about any kids that had it, and get there and vaccinate around them. So that was kind of interesting. And he had been at Google.org, work in more contemporary times, and then I found out that they had funded a group doing this computational epidemiology work. So basically looking at new information sources in public health, and that's where, more, my specific vision started to crystallize a little bit further, and I wanted to definitely take that more rigorously, and so I thought a further position, both in the public health side and the computational side, would be important for that, and got the opportunity at NYU.
Aman- Showcasing it and setting the tone for future students to come as well and find their multifaceted paths. Speaking of future students, on this podcast, I've spoken to a lot of students in the past, that a common theme what attracted them to the School of Global Public Health, is this multifaceted nature, then their ability to find different classes and kind of bring them together. For a student that might be outside NYU, probably applying to a different university or even NYU, how would you advise these students to find their multifaceted path as you did yours? What is something that stands out to you for that one?
Rumi Chunara- Yeah. I mean, I'm really excited about that, because I'm just one person doing research, and there's so many brilliant young people, not so young people out there, and I'm really excited to see what they all do. So I would encourage all of them to keep an open mind and take all the opportunities they can get. Like really, for me, I was lucky to have a lot of opportunities at good schools, and to see research in different areas, and so I was very lucky to have all those chances, which helped me navigate in those spaces and find where... What made sense and what resonated. And so, taking advantage of whatever opportunities there are is important, and keeping an open mind, trying it wholeheartedly, and seeing what's really involved in the nitty gritty in the day-to-day, to get a sense of where you can go.
Aman- Valuable stuff, folks. Listen to that on replay, and find your heart, follow it. There's many... There's many opportunities out there at NYU, especially if you go here, it's the room for discovery, is unlimited. Go connect with different schools. There's a bunch of cool stuff out there. Speaking of that, Rumi, what's going on in your world right now? What's on your mind most of the time, with regards to this new center? Tell us about it.
Rumi Chunara- Yeah. I mean, linking to your previous question, Aman, like, public health is by nature, like super multifaceted, right? So just like a little shout out there to public health, because what is public health? It deals with all these like multi-level, multidisciplinary topics that relate to our health, is what happens before we get to the hospital, in the hospital and after. And so... Yeah, that's a great place to really be exposed to health, but also a lot of other topics. And so, therefore, although my specific research is very data heavy, right? The research my group has been doing has been related to like using data for public health priorities. But at the same time we realized that, it's not the end all, like it doesn't tell the whole story. We have to look at data in combination with like, we can really benefit by looking at some of the knowledge from public, whether it's public health frameworks, theories, urban planning, like civil engineering. That really cross-disciplinary aspect is important as we even leverage data to really address public health priorities. And so, that's kind of been the impetus for the starting this new center, which will be launching this fall, the Center for Health Data Science at NYU School of Global Public Health. We wanna take data science and rigorously couple it with all the knowledge that we have from different disciplines, and with this pluralistic view, to really value all that different knowledge, we naturally also will really value the kind of input and exposures we would have from different people, from different places, with different experiences. So we're really focusing on making it a hub for these kind of knowledge ecosystems.
Aman- So where are you folks getting started from? You're creating this amazing hub. There seems to be universities involved in it. What's the... What's one of the first projects that we're starting on for this one?
Rumi Chunara- Yeah, so to be a little bit more tangible, like a nice exemplar for this kind of approach, is a new training program we have which is through the NIH, they have this data science Africa initiative, and the idea is, of course, to help build up the data science capacity and activity across the continent. And so at NYU, we've partnered with one of the universities, Moi University, which is in Western Kenya. There's a strong history of work with Moi, through NYU, through our collaborators at NYU Langone, the medical school, and Moi has also been collaborating strongly with like Brown University, to develop their biostatistics programs. So they have been very active also in building up their own education and research. And so, we are kind of now looking towards, "Okay, now data science has become so pervasive in all the spaces, right? Even public health. And so how do we... How do we add to that?" And so the training program itself, I mean, the idea is to actually develop data science training, masters and PhD graduate level programs at Moi, but at the same time, in order to do that, we're gonna have some folks from Moi over at NYU, take some of the existing courses, right? That they don't have yet there, and then they're the ones who are gonna lead it at Moi. And so that's kind of the goal. And our focus has also been not just data science, but specifically data science for social determinants, social determinants being like all the social factors that also relate to our health. And the reason we did that is because it's very crosscutting. Social determinants are relevant to infectious diseases like COVID or non-communicable diseases like heart disease, or even like trauma, and so it's crosscutting, meaning a lot of people can get involved in the data science, like new efforts. And it's also a little bit unique. Like now we're kind of like thinking about data in a little bit broader way, like when we... Instead of only thinking, sometimes when we think about data science and health, we might only think about like individual level data, like what's my biomedical factors, like my... What's my hypertension level? Or what's my... What's my age? But now we're thinking broadly, because we know those other factors like what's in the green... Like what kind of green spaces are around me that affects my mental health, that affects my physical health? Or like, what's the... What kind of food is available that can shape what I end up eating? And so we're kind of bringing it to that kind of broader perspective as well.
Aman- Wow! There seems to be... The thing that stood out to me is this connection with other schools, and there seems to be people coming from different countries and this cross-disciplinary social type of environment that's there, and building connections with schools in other places, sounds like a great idea. But how does it happen effectively? How are you able to do this so effectively?
Rumi Chunara- Yeah. So thanks, Aman, and it's not as... It's an ongoing... It's an ongoing effort, but we have this vision because, again, just like for health we know like, your health is related to my health, and so we're really interested in being interconnected. And again, like even when we... We work on problems, we're concerned with what happens in different places, but it's not just us who should be doing that. It's like everybody. So how do we do that effectively and collaboratively? I mean, there's a lot of work on partnerships, and we know it has to be like long term, and things like trust, and... And so, so we work in that way, meaning, kind of developing these things. One aspect that we approach it by, is by like formalizing it a bit too. So we wanna make sure it's like formal, meaning everyone knows what they're gonna get out of it, maybe everyone's clear what they want to get out of it. That way by formalizing it a bit, if anyone has to like... It's life, things happen, things change. If someone has to exit the partnership, then we do so in a manner that's good for everybody. So it's very considerate, I would say, of everyone's goals. And then we've been working on this with different schools, Moi University in East Africa. We're hopefully gonna continue this with some other schools in South Asia, Central Asia. So really getting a broad perspective. And that's particularly important given, we're concerned with things like the health... Health of us, which is like intertwined with the health of our planet these days, right? And so these places have a lot of very prescient warnings about that as well, and so that kind of inspired where we're looking, in terms of collaborations with schools.
Aman- So what could... What could you share with an NYU student? How would such a program benefit someone at NYU as well, us here at NYU?
Rumi Chunara- Yeah, that's a great question, right? Of course, it seems like theoretically good, but what's the... What happens... Why would we engage in it? Well, first of all, it's nice, since the whole theme, kind of, as you might have seen from our center, the way we're setting it up is like, really to really value different forms of knowledge, and your different perspectives from different places. And so I think by naturally increasing that exposure, I think that creates a nice chance at NYU for us to meet people with different perspectives, and really carry that into our own, like how we advance in ourselves. So on a personal level too, I'm sure it'll be nice to... I'm sure, and I have benefited by all these endeavors to build network, work networks, but also friendships, that are just like, I wouldn't miss out in my life on. But finally, I think really, the most important thing is it advances our work. It advances our scholarship, our teaching, just because by integrating different forms of knowledge, this enables us in the kind of things that we look at, the kinds of problems, how we approach them, this all becomes stronger. And so in the bottom line, is that this improves the... The ethos of the university, which is on research and teaching as well.
Aman- That is... That is a short sneak peek into the Center for Health and Data Science right now. When does the... Is the center, has it begun or is it gonna begin soon, this whole project?
Rumi Chunara- Yeah, we're launching this fall, so keep an eye out for to see more information on the web, on social media, about the project I just spoke about now, and a lot more exciting ones coming up as well.
Aman- This one, folks, is for the multifaceted students, the ones that have their feet wet into oceans at the same time, and it seems like everyone's kind of following that path today. And Rumi Chunara is a perfect example for that. With one final question, Rumi, I'd love to know what keeps you going every day in this world of public health? What's your... What's your why? What's the thing that makes you wake up in the morning and keep doing this that you're doing every day? So, in fact, in such an amazing form, it's so admirable to see that. So what's your why in this journey?
Rumi Chunara- Oh! Man, Aman, that's a... That's a great question. I mean, I'll get very vulnerable to talk about it, but I mean, I just alluded to it during our chat, where I just feel so lucky to have had so many good chances in life. Like, I got to go to great schools, I got to meet a lot of cool people, a lot of great teachers, and I'm just one person, and I just feel like there's so many people around, like kids from different parts of the world, and like here in New York, and different parts of the states as well. And imagine like all the things that could... They could accomplish with the right opportunities too. And like, I'm not separate from them, so it's clear that I must work towards advancing that, those opportunities for them, given all the ones that I have. So that's what keeps me up every day.
Aman- Beautiful answer. Folks, we are all in this together. This is a collaborative environment and this is a great example to show where NYU can take it, especially in a cross-disciplinary fashion. Thank you so much for your time, Rumi Folks, we'll shoot all this stuff in the description for anything related to the center, and anything related to even Rumi Chunara's bio. Thank you so much for your time, and we were really, really happy to have you on the podcast today.
Rumi Chunara- My pleasure. Thanks.