Molly Ehrig is entering her second and final year as a Master of Biostatistics student. She is from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 2022 where she majored in biology and minored in statistics. Ehrig recently interned at Wake Forest School of Medicine in the biostatistics department.
What do you enjoy most about this program?
It allows me to merge my interests of science and healthcare. I feel like the program leaders care about us and our interests. It’s very cool that we have a career counselor and a career class. It’s one of the reasons that I chose Duke because having Laura Coutts, Associate Director of Career Development, and the class is unique and extremely helpful. I also like the class size, how it wasn't too small, and has a more collaborative environment instead of competitive one.
What have been some of your favorite classes?
I've honestly liked a lot of the classes, but my favorite class was probably Applied Biostatistics, which I took my first semester. It gave us a good basis and foundational understanding of the statistics we would be doing in our future careers. Last semester, I took Observational Studies. I really enjoyed that because I didn't know anything about it, and I felt like I learned a lot. The programming classes also gave me the skills I need to be able to attack real problems.
Most challenging aspect of the program?
Trying to balance school priorities and finding an internship was challenging. I don’t think we, as students, were prepared for how difficult finding an internship would be. But Duke has a lot of opportunities that presented themselves later.
Summer internships aren’t a requirement of the program, so why did you want to do one?
I wanted to have some real-world experience with statistics and biostatistics after doing a lot of biology research in undergrad. I wanted to put the skills I had learned in my first year into practice and gain some experience working in this field before entering the workforce. I also wanted to see what it would be like working in this field.
What type of work did you do for your internship?
I worked on an independent research project called, “Non-Ignorable Missing Data in the Electronic Health Records.” When you're looking at electronic health records, there's a lot of missing data and it could be missing for a ton of reasons. Physicians might just not enter it, and that lack of collection and documentation presents an issue when people are trying to use the data for research purposes. Missing data often just gets deleted, but that could lead to bias or inaccurate results. My project specifically focused on whether the missing indicator method is beneficial when data is longitudinal and missingness is non-ignorable.
Describe your internship experience.
Kendall Mincey, Senior Program Coordinator, sent out the information, but I didn’t think I was qualified at first because it was a biomedical engineering and informatics program. But once I was accepted, the internship lasted about 10 weeks. It started just after Memorial Day and ended August 4. I worked on an independent project and had two mentors at Wake Forest School of Medicine. I met with my mentors weekly to discuss the project and connected with other people in the biostatistics department.
What advice do you have for incoming Master of Biostats students?
Take advantage of all the resources Duke has. For this program, take advantage of having Laura, our career counselor. In general, try not to get discouraged, especially when looking for an internship. Just keep at it. Put yourself out there, have fun, and do things outside of the program, like go to sporting events. That will really help you make friends with other people in the cohort.
What are your future plans?
I am hoping to have a career as a biostatistician supporting studies that improve public health. I'm not exactly sure what setting I want to work in, whether academia, clinical, hospital, or pharmaceuticals. But after my experience at Wake Forest, I'm thinking about something in academia. I really enjoyed that experience, and I felt like I got more of a sense of what it would be like to work in it.