Alan L. Hutchison

MD/PhD Candidate
University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine
University of Chicago, Integrated Scientist Training Program, Biophysics
E-mail: alan.l.hutchison at gmail dot com
E-mail: alanlhutchison at uchicago dot edu
CV: PDF

Academics

I am a first-year MD/PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine. I am pursuing my medical degree as I desire to treat and serve patients, as well as to support and further social justice. Since I am in the Integrated Scientist Training Program, I have been taking graduate classes in addition to my medical school classes in order to complete my requirements for my degree in Biophysics. I am interested in applying the tools and methods of physics to biological systems, as well as applying the same mathematical and computational skills to epidemiological questions in healthcare.

Organizations

• Medical Scientist Training Program In addition to being on the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) Student Council, I help facilitate the functioning of the MSTP, including planning and seeking funding for Chicago inter-program seminars and events. On March 28th, 2012, I traveled to Washington D.C. with fellow University of Chicago MSTP students on behalf of the Coalition for Life Sciences to speak with members of Congress about supporting NIH funding.
  
  
• Biological Sciences Division Dean's Council I represent the MSTP on the Biological Sciences Divison (BSD) Dean's Council, planning events for the BSD student body.

Personal Projects

• Predicting Drug Resistance Though I have not chosen any labs to rotate in yet, I have been looking into the experimental and computational techniques underlying the prediction of drug resistance in bacterial populations. I find evolution and natural selection to be fascinating topics and hope to have the opportunity explore their impact on individual and community health.
  
  
• Healthcare Equality Index Every year the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) sends medical institutions the Healthcare Equality Index Survey, which rates them on the quality of their LGBT-patient-oriented policies. These policies include issues such as patient non-discrimination policies, visitation policies, training in LGBT patient-centered care, and employment non-discrimination policies. In addition to rating the institutions, the HRC also engages and advised the institutions on how they can improve their LGBT policies and thereby improve their HEI score. HRC additionally provides free webinars on training and LGBT policies for participating institutions.
  
  Upon learning that the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) did not participate in the survey, I petitioned the administration to become involved. UCMC will now be included in the HEI's 2012 survey results, and is actively engaged in reviewing its LGBT policies.
  
  After getting UCMC to participate, I now hope to convince other medical institutions in the Chicago area to participate as well. I have been communicating with students at other Chicago medical schools as well as administration at local government and community-centered institutions to become involved, which I hope will illuminate their strengths as health care providers, lead to an improvement in their policies, and increase the quality of care for their entire patient population.

Publications

• Hutchison, AL, Hutchison, RL. ”Fibonacci, Littler, and the Hand: A Brief Review.” HAND (NY), Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 364-8, April 2010.
  
  
• Hutchison, RL, Hutchison AL. ”César Roux and his original 1893 paper.” Obesity Surgery, Vol. 20, No. 7, pp. 953-6, July 2010.
  
  
• McCullough BR, Grintsevich EE, Chen CK, Kang H, Hutchison AL, Henn A, Cao W, Suarez C, Martiel JL, Blanchoin L, Reisler E, De La Cruz EM. ”Cofilin-linked changes in actin filament flexibility promote severing.” Biophysical J., Vol 101, No. 1, 151-9, July 2011.
  
  
• Yang L, Shklyar I, Lee HW, Ezeani C, Anaya J, Balakirsky S, Han X, Enamandram S, Men C, Cheng JY, Nunn A, Mayer T, Francois C, Albrecht M, Hutchison AL, Yap E-L, Ing K, Didebulidze G, Xiao B, Hamid H, Farooque P, Detyniecki K, Giacino JT, Blumenfeld H. ”Impaired consciousness in epilepsy investigated by a prospective responsiveness in epilepsy scale (RES).” Epilepsia, (In press) 2011.

Awards

• New England Journal of Medicine Essay Contest NEJM had a technology in medicine essay competition. I submitted an essay and I was chosen as a NEJM Scholar, invited to attend the NEJM 200th Anniversary Symposium in Boston, MA, on June 22nd, 2012. A copy of my essay can be found here.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank fellow medical student Colin Pesyna for his technical aid. He also shared the .TeX and .cls files I use for my CV.