Cynthia Yan is a first-year medical student at the Medical College of Wisconsin with interests in surgical outcomes research, translational data science, and improving efficiency in surgical care. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2025 with degrees in Computer Science and Biology and a minor in Bioinformatics. As an undergraduate, she used machine learning to study neuroimaging and biomarker datasets related to neurodegenerative disease, which sparked a broader interest in using computational approaches to uncover structure and relationships in high-dimensional clinical datasets.

In medical school, Cynthia has expanded this interest into surgical research focused on using machine learning and artificial intelligence to better understand surgical outcomes and clinical decision-making. Her work explores how structured clinical data and information embedded in medical records can be integrated to improve risk prediction, patient stratification, and perioperative planning. Cynthia is particularly interested in developing AI-driven tools that help surgeons interpret complex clinical data, improve workflow efficiency, and support better decision-making in the operating room and perioperative setting. She hopes to pursue a career as a physician-scientist where she can combine surgery with computational research to improve surgical systems and patient outcomes.