Why did you choose the Yale School of Public Health?
Yale and the Chinese Ministry of Education launched the China Scholarship Council-Yale World Scholars Program in Public Health in 2018. This program offers students with outstanding research training, various research opportunities, and excellent resources from Yale. Its ultimate goal is to prepare the scholars to become the next generation of scientific leaders in public health in China, which is what I hope to accomplish as a researcher one day. Therefore, I applied to this program to further my education with the fantastic training and recourses that only YSPH can provide.
What were you doing before enrolling at YSPH?
I was an undergraduate student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a bachelor’s degree in Preventive Medicine, as well as a minor in Statistics at East China Normal University.
What are your favorite aspects of the YSPH academic program?
There are so many wonderful aspects of the YSPH program: opportunities to do research with faculties from different areas, a wide range of courses, a diverse and inclusive environment, etc.
There are two aspects of my program that I would like to highlight in particular. First, in my department, Environmental Health Sciences, PhD students are encouraged to do lab rotations in different professors’ labs to identify the research area that truly interests them. This can also help enlarge their research knowledge and build a potential network with different professors. Second, I really appreciate the abundant resources from the Yale Medical Library. We have knowledgeable and approachable librarians, various workshops that cover different topics, helpful statistical consultants, etc. All these have assisted my research in numerous ways.
There are so many wonderful aspects of the YSPH program: opportunities to do research with faculties from different areas, a wide range of courses, a diverse and inclusive environment, etc.
Xiaoting Shi, PhD '24
What was your most impactful experience outside of class?
I attended the 9th International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication, which is considered one of the top academic conferences in my area of research. I was honored to be able to present my research at the conference, which was a wonderful learning experience for me. I also had the opportunity to talk to different researchers and journal editors on some interesting topics. Most importantly, I was able to learn about cutting-edge research on different topics in my field.
Do you have a favorite Yale place or New Haven food?
Arethusa has the best ice cream that I have ever had in my life!
What do you hope to do after graduation?
After graduation, I hope to continue my research as a research scientist. My training and research focus on meta-research (i.e., research on research itself), epidemiology, and causal inference. I have broad research interests in multiple areas. One area that I am particularly interested in is applying methodologies of meta-research in epidemiology to generate high-quality evidence that has the potential to guide clinical practices.