March 23, 2026

Now in his final quarter of the MPH program, Varun Awasthi has much to reflect on as he prepares for graduation in June 2026. Varun is studying Epidemiology within the Dornsife School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and has leveraged various opportunities to maximize his time at Drexel.

As a Graduate Research Assistant at the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute, Varun is contributing to a systematic review and meta-analysis of the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) which is a screening tool used in autism research and screening. He is also a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Introduction to Statistical Computing course where he guides fellow students through SAS programming and applied data analysis.

Additionally, Varun is a Dornsife Ambassador where he connects with the next generation of public health students, sharing his own journey with those considering a Dornsife master’s program.

Before coming to Dornsife, Varun completed his bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Amity University in India. This degree laid the foundation for what would eventually lead him toward public health. To learn more about his story, he answered some questions below.

Why did you decide to pursue public health?

My interest in public health grew from my training in pharmacy. While pursuing my bachelor’s in pharmacy, I realized that medicines alone do not determine health outcomes. The bigger picture includes access to care, population level risks, and how treatments perform in real world settings. Through public health training, I want to study medication safety and outcomes at a population level and contribute to research that improves how treatments are used in everyday clinical practice.

What challenges did you face while working towards your degree?

One challenge I faced during my MPH was learning programming for data analysis. Coding in SAS and R was completely new to me, and managing that alongside graduate coursework took consistent effort in the beginning. I spent time outside class practicing and gradually became comfortable using these tools. During the summer, I applied my R skills in my Applied Practical Experience (APE), and later I was able to support other students as a Teaching Assistant for the SAS course.

Why Dornsife?

I chose Dornsife because it combines strong academic training with real world public health practice. The school’s mission of advancing health as a human right and addressing health disparities really resonated with me when I was deciding where to study.

Studying public health in a city like Philadelphia also makes a huge difference. The city itself becomes a classroom, with opportunities to understand urban health challenges and work with communities and organizations across the region. Centers like the Urban Health Collaborative reflect how the school focuses on improving health in cities through research and partnerships.

Most importantly, the people at Dornsife made it feel like it was the right place for me. Faculty, staff, and students have been incredibly supportive and collaborative, and that environment made a huge difference in my experience. Looking back, choosing Dornsife was one of the best decisions I made for my academic and professional growth.

What was your favorite class?

The courses that had a strong impact on me were Public Health Foundations and Systems I and II. These courses gave me a broad understanding of the mission of public health, the history behind it, and how knowledge is translated into policies and real-world public health action. They helped me see how leadership, program planning, and policy all come together to address population health problems.

Another course that shaped my training was Intermediate Epidemiology. This course pushed me to think more critically about how we study disease and risk factors in observational research. Learning about causal inference, bias, confounding, and study design helped me understand how rigorous epidemiologic research is conducted and how evidence is built in public health. Together, these courses strengthened both my conceptual understanding of public health and my technical skills in epidemiologic research.

What was your favorite interaction or moment with a Drexel faculty member(s)?

One interaction that stayed with me was a conversation with my mentor, Dr. Brian Lee. During a conversation about career development, he shared thoughtful advice on how to deal with rejection in academic and professional settings. He emphasized that rejections are inevitable and often unrelated to the quality of the work, and that the most important thing is to keep producing good work and keep moving forward. Hearing that from someone experienced in the field helped me put setbacks into perspective and focus on long term growth.

I also had a great learning experience with professor Dr. Goro Yamada. I took three courses with him: Introduction to Statistical Computing, Intermediate Biostatistics I and Longitudinal Data Analysis. He has a very clear way of explaining complex statistical ideas and a deep command of the material, which made difficult concepts easier to understand. Those courses played a major role in building my confidence in statistical analysis and programming.

Can you give an example of how you applied what you learned directly to your practical learning experience?

During my APE, I worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute on a project titled “A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) in Screening for Autism.” In this role, I helped screen and extract data from published studies, assess study quality, and contribute to the synthesis of evidence on how well the SRS performs as a screening tool.

This experience allowed me to apply epidemiologic concepts from my coursework to real research, especially in areas like study design, statistical modeling and evidence synthesis. It also strengthened my understanding of how rigorous research can inform clinical and public health decision making.

What’s next for you?

Next, I will begin a PhD in Health Services, Outcomes, and Policy at Purdue University in Fall 2026. My background in pharmacy first introduced me to how medications affect individual patients, and my MPH in Epidemiology expanded that perspective to population health and real-world evidence.

During my time at Drexel, I became especially interested in studying how medications perform outside controlled clinical trials and how data can be used to improve treatment decisions. Through my PhD, I hope to combine these foundations to study medication safety, treatment outcomes, and the performance of health systems using large real-world databases. My long-term goal is to build a career as an independent researcher who generates evidence that helps clinicians, policymakers, and health systems make better decisions for patients and communities.

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