UICOMP’s Emily Shi Named Fulbright Scholar
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Emily Shi (UICOMP Class of 2025) was selected as a 2024 Fulbright Scholar. The award was presented through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the US government’s international educational exchange program for cross-cultural understanding.
Fulbright award recipients are selected by the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board based on leadership potential, academic and professional achievement and public service.
Emily has completed her M3 year at UICOMP and is a 2021 UIC grad with a degree in chemistry. Under the Fulbright program, she received the National Taiwan University Master’s Degree Program Award in Global Health, a two-year commitment she will begin in September. She will focus on Taiwanese women’s perception of menstrual pain and how those perceptions affect the diagnosis of endometriosis. Her aim is to earn a master’s degree in global health at National Taiwan University and learn the skills she needs to become a physician and researcher.
“Living and studying in a country that captures Asian culture and traditional health philosophies will allow me to deeply understand the population I hope to focus on both during the Fulbright and in my future career as a global women’s health researcher,” she said. “My background in these contexts helped me realize how cultural forces are particularly relevant to OBGYN, which I am interested in pursuing, These forces are oftentimes magnified within reproductive health, and I’d like to understand how they contribute to poor outcomes and women’s health disparities.”
After her second year of medical school, Shi built an eight-week research elective which then served as a research project for her Fulbright application. Dr. Gelila Goba and Dr. Stevan Weine in the College of Medicine and UIC Center for Global Health mentored and inspired Shi to seek the Fulbright and research global health issues, she said.