Ayesha Firdous, a second-year PSTP student mentored by Dr. Gwendolyn Sowa, was recently invited to present a talk at the 6th Annual Philadelphia Spine Research Symposium. Her talk was titled "Predicting and Characterizing the Probability for Continued Opioid Use in the Chronic Low Back Pain Population using the novel Network Phenotyping Strategy Method". In this talk, she discusses how she applied a novel data analysis methodology called "Network Phenotyping Strategy" (which was developed in her lab) to a UPMC database to gain insight into factors that predict the likelihood of continued opioid use amongst individuals with chronic low back pain.
Before joining the PSTP, Ayesha received her Bachelor's Degree in Neuroscience from Barnard College in 2017. In her free time, Ayesha enjoys cooking, traveling, and spending time with friends and family!