Students Promoting Health Advocacy and Engagement with Communities

Apurv Hirsh Shekhar was born and raised in Plymouth, MN as a son of two Indian immigrants. Before starting medical school at Yale, he graduated early from Johns Hopkins University with a B.S. in Public Health and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. As Co-Founder of S-PHASEC Emergency Response, Student Research Fellow at Yale Law School’s Solomon Center for Health Law & Policy, and former National Director of National Student Response Network, Hirsh helped organize the health professions student response to COVID-19 locally and nationally, successfully advocating for a PREP Act expansion for health student vaccinators and engaging the Biden-Harris COVID-19 Task Force, Clinton Foundation, MIT PathCheck, and partners such as GOTVax, ThisIsOurShot, and Grossman Solutions.

Danielle is mentor, scientist, leader, innovator, and entrepreneur who is completing her training as an MD-PhD student at Yale School of Medicine. She has many interests but is most passionate about the intersection between technology, science, and society and hopes to incorporate addressing emerging issues at this intersection throughout her career. Now completing her PhD, her work is focused on using cutting-edge technologies (single cell epigenomics and spatial transcriptomics) combined with machine learning algorithms and molecular biology to establish how the tumor microenvironment contributes to brain cancer growth and development, while strategizing new precision medicine targets. Danielle has been involved in collaborative research studying neurovascular genetic abnormalities and has published work in The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA Neurology, and Nature Medicine as well as many other medical, neurosurgical, and scientific journals. Danielle has established herself as a leader within both the Yale and New Haven communities. She is currently Head of Life Science Research and Development at The Dev Effect, a research engineering group specializing in machine learning. She is Director of Clinical Operations for Nucleate New Haven, a member of the Board of Directors for Minorities in Medicine, Co-Founder and Co-President of the Yale Cushing Society, Co-Founder of SPHASEC emergency response and the PIECE vaccination campaign, Medical Student Representative for the American Association of Neurological Surgeons Young Neurosurgeons Committee, and Founding Curator of the Global Shapers New Haven Hub.