Ms. Yasaswini Iyer is dual degree graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Chemical Biology and an Master’s in Public Health from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio. During her time at CWRU she served as President and Advocacy Chair for Advocates for Cleveland Health (A4CH), a community based organization that addresses public health outcomes through education, advocacy, and volunteering. Ms. Iyer also served as the Vice President of Finance and Director of Academic Achievement for her sorority, Alpha Gamma Delta. She loved the process of teaching and mentorship throughout her academic journey at CWRU and served as a TA for an introductory biology class BIOL 215: Cells and Proteins and an introductory biochemistry class BIOC 328: Introduction to Biochemistry. She received the Outstanding TA award in 2021. Since her freshman year in college, Ms. Iyer explored her interests in research by conducting wet lab research in the Genetics Department at CWRU School of Medicine, Computational Biology research at Georgetown School of Medicine, qualitative survey analysis as a TA for BIOC 328, and Public Health research at the Harrington Heart and Vascular institute. Her diligence to science has awarded her presentations at several conferences and publications.
Ms. Iyer is also a company Bharatanatyam dancer at Natya Dance Theater based out of Chicago, IL. She has been dancing since she was five years old and has performed at several notable venues around the world including Millennium Park, Bharat Kalachar, Navy Pier, HI DC, and Brahma Gana Sabha to name a few. Ms. Iyer follows a plant-based diet and enjoys cooking and trying out new recipes in her free time.
Through her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, Ms. Iyer is conducting nine months of research assessing public perceptions and knowledge towards air pollution as a cardiovascular risk factor in India. Environmental factors are increasingly related to human health, especially hypertension. She hopes her project will eventually result in the design of culturally sensitive interventions contextualized across socioeconomic gradients. Ms. Iyer is situated in New Delhi, India and collaborating with the CCDC (Center for Disease Control). She is creating/administering questionnaires to probe the public perspectives on the relationship between the two variables. She is excited to engage with a healthcare system different from that of the U.S.