Trainee Profiles

Undergraduate Students

Katy Flynn-O'Brien
(2003-2004)

My name is Katy Flynn-O'Brien. I am a New Mexico native and I just finished my junior year at Brown University where I am a Hispanic Studies and Premed major. I combine my love for the Spanish language and the many Hispanic cultures with my love for science and medicine though a variety of classes and extracurricular activities. My experience in the medical field includes both research and clinical work. I volunteered in the Pediatric Clinic at the University of New Mexico Hospital in the summer of 2002 and, since the fall of 2003, I have been volunteering at the Women and Infant’s Neo-natal Clinic in Providence, Rhode Island. I assist in research studies and medical examinations. I also translate for Spanish speaking patients. I began working in the Memory Clinic at Butler Hospital in the spring of 2003, where I am currently researching working memory in patients with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, and vascular dementia.

At Brown, I co-coordinate a Project Health program called FitNut, for Fitness and Nutrition, in which a small group of volunteers and I teach and mentor a group of 12 and 13 year-old girls about physical fitness and nutrition, and about its importance in leading a healthy lifestyle free of disease. My university classes also foster my interests in medicine and languages, which range from Physiology and the US Public Healthcare System to The Creativity of Latin America and Post Civil War Spanish Literature.

During the fall semester of 2004 I studied abroad in Ecuador. While in Ecuador, I conducted a one month long independent study project on the decentralization of the healthcare system in the small northern Andean town of Cotacachi. After I graduate from Brown next May, I would like to go to medical school. Ultimately, I want to be a bilingual doctor and work in various parts of the country and the world. Hobbies of mine include running, traveling, and cooking.