Rice University | Baylor College of Medicine
Christopher Sylvester
Data Scientist, Cardiothoracic Surgery Outcomes Research Group, Baylor College of Medicine
Research Assistant, Grande-Allen Integrative Matrix Mechanics Laboratory, Rice University
I am an MD/PhD candidate in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University Department of Bioengineering. My research interests are clinical outcomes, biomechanics, and cell signaling in cardiovascular medicine, especially valve disease. My clinical research focuses on using the Nationwide Readmissions Database to identify outcomes and risk factors after cardiac surgery. Moving forward I hope to use machine learning techniques to better understand and mitigate risk for patients undergoing complex cardiothoracic surgery. My benchtop research focuses on identifying new therapeutcics to identify a drug that can treat calcific aortic valve disease. Especially, I study how early intracellular calcium signaling, controlled via valve insterstitial cell-expressed ryanodine receptor isotype 3, can prevent the formation and progression of calcific nodules. Overall, my career research goals are to be able to understand how phenomena observed in the basic sciences apply to patients and then translate these findings into useful modifiers of disease.
I am defening my PhD thesis in December 2022, and I plan to graduate from medical school in May 2023, after which I will enter a surgical residency.