Joshua Ku ’22

Major

Computer Science

Project Title

Mucormycosis Burden Survey

Mucormycosis is an opportunistic fungal infection with a high mortality rate. My project focused on creating a map of the mucormycosis burden (infections) on a global scale using existing literature as data. I performed a literature review on the search engines PubMed and Google Scholar, then mapped mucormycosis burden using the software QGIS. Throughout my internship, the most interesting thing to me was reading through the case reports. Each one painted a distinct picture of a different patient with mucormycosis. There were stories of mucormycosis being discovered and addressed in time, and of when it failed to be addressed. Other cases were hospital-acquired infections where quick identifications were important. Reading through these personal stories helped strengthen my resolve to pursue a career based in health care.



Internship Year

2021

Project Category

Food Systems, Water And Human Health

Organization(s)

Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP)

Mentor(s)

Ramanan Laxminarayan, Senior Research Scholar, High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University; Ruchita Balasubramanian ’19, CDDEP