Rimma Perotte PhD ’16, Casey Overby Taylor PostDoc ’13, Featured In Biomedical Informatics Training Series

Rimma Perotte PhD'16, Casey Overby Taylor PostDoc '13, Featured In Biomedical Informatics Training Series

Rimma Perotte developed an interest in medicine early in life, but took some time to find the right path. Skilled in both math and computer science, an undergraduate internship in bioinformatics showed her how she could make an impact in the field.

Casey Overby Taylor was interested in many areas of science, but it wasn’t until a conversation with her father until she figured out how to bring that broad scope of interests together for the right career.

For both Rimma and Casey, the right path to the right career went through the offices of the Columbia Department of Biomedical Informatics. Rimma graduated with her PhD from Columbia DBMI in 2016, while Casey completed a post-doctoral National Library of Medicine informatics training fellowship at Columbia DBMI in 2013. Both were featured in a recent series of NLM-Trained profiles, which highlight both the impact and diversity of biomedical informatics professional opportunities.

Rimma is currently a Lecturer in Biomedical Informatics at DBMI and the Director of Biomedical Informatics, Emergency Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center, while Casey is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

In both the short videos and accompanying case studies listed below, both describe their backgrounds and interests, and what drew them to biomedical informatics. They also discuss why they entered a biomedical informatics program, how they chose their specific program, and memorable program experiences.

Rimma Perotte PhD '16

As a child, Rimma Perotte loved math and science and felt it was cool to be smart in school. She also loved going to the doctor where clinicians asked, “How are you feeling?” and helped people feel better. These interests caused Rimma to consider a career in medicine, but she didn’t see being a clinician as a good fit. She decided to study math and biology while in college at Northeastern University to see where that took her.

Casey Overby Taylor PostDoc '13

Discovering Bioinformatics Casey Overby Taylor was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, but moved a great deal as a child, going to five different elementary schools. She had many interests, ranging from the arts to entomology to engineering, computer science, and medicine. Since both of her parents had PhDs and were in academia, she had familiarity with education and research—and considered this a possible career path.

This project was funded by the National Library of Medicine Administrative Supplement Funds to the Harvard Medical School Biomedical Informatics and Data Science Training program 3T15LM007092-26S1. The videos are available under the CC-BY 4.0 license.