Franklin Regional grad named Truman Scholar recipient
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Editor’s note: Neighbor Spotlight is a monthly feature that aims to let our readers learn more about the people in their communities who are working to make them a better place, who have interesting stories to tell or who the community feels deserve “15 minutes of fame.” If you would like to nominate someone as a Neighbor Spotlight, see murrysville.com, select the “Post Story” button in the upper right corner and complete the form to publish your nomination. Questions? Email Neighborhood News Network editor Katie Green at kgreen@triblive.com.
In the past two years, Bhav Jain of Murrysville has traveled back and forth to New England for school during the pandemic, founded an organization that helps connect and engage with seniors experiencing social isolation, and last week graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with plans for graduate school.
Those plans will be helped along by his selection as one of 58 Truman Scholars, chosen from more than 700 candidates nationwide to receive $30,000 toward graduate studies.
“Right now I’m applying to medical school and want to pursue a joint M.D. degree with a master’s in either public health or public policy,” Jain said. “That will allow me to simultaneously practice medicine and translate my experiences with patients to realize change at the policy level.”
He is majoring in computation and cognition, and has participated in scientific research at Massachusetts General Hospital, using computational techniques to investigate neural circuits related to post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and, and major depressive disorder.
Jain began public health work the summer after his first year at MIT, working as a community health intern at the Cambridge Health Alliance. He analyzed population health costs for Medicaid, as well as local immigrant population needs in response to covid-19. At the same time, he became a founding member of Compass, a student-developed covid-19 triaging text line that connects underserved populations with nearby testing locations. They have since pivoted to focusing on issues of patient intake, scheduling, and follow-up through automated systems, with support from The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT.
In 2021, he and fellow students from schools in the Northeast started The Connected Foundation, reaching out to seniors experiencing social isolation that intensified during the pandemic.
It is now active in 35 high school and college chapters in 20 states.
“Recently, we’ve been interested in partnering with insurance organizations and health plans to increase the number of older adults that we serve,” Jain said. “As such, we’re developing plans to directly serve older adults in their homes or at long-term care facilities affiliated with our partner plans.”
Most recently, Jain partnered with MIT’s Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering Emery Brown and a graduate student to develop StatsAcademy, an online probability and statistics education platform designed for K-12 students.
“Students learn statistics in the latter half of high school or in college, with poor understanding of the fundamentals of the subject area,” Jain said. “We’re building an online platform for use by students across K-12 and college designed to teach statistics at every grade level with intuitive simulations and explanations.
“When a student encounters a difficult statistics concept in college, it will be intuitive based on the background established by StatsAcademy.”
Brown said Jain has a bright future.
“The unique blend of interpersonal and problem-solving skills that Bhav possesses will position him to be an empathetic leader in medicine and health care economics and health care policy,” he said.