Katie Crum, SM ’25, combines interest in data and public health to improve design of drug trials
Katie Crum was working as a research assistant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston when she decided to pursue a master’s degree from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. This month, she will graduate with an SM in epidemiology.
“I really liked that the Chan program had a very rigorous focus on study design,” Crum says of the two-year SM-80 program. “I really like working with data … so it’s sort of tying together my interests in math and statistics and trying to help people.”
Over the last two years, Crum has focused on the design of clinical drug trials, an essential step in ensuring that new treatments are effective and safe. Doing this work in Boston’s health care hub, surrounded by teaching hospitals, was a plus for Crum. She also found numerous mentors who helped her along the way.
“My thesis advisor has really given me the agency to make decisions and take ownership over that work in a way that I haven’t been able to do before,” Crum says.
She also enjoyed meeting fellow students from around the world, and has been inspired by their passions and ambitions. “Public health is really all about collaboration and bringing in all of these different perspectives and experiences, and my classmates have most certainly done that for me,” she says.
Outside of her studies, Crum is a part of a running club that includes participants from Harvard Chan School, Harvard Medical School, and people working at nearby hospitals.
Crum advises incoming master’s students to get out of their comfort zones while at Harvard.
“It goes very quickly over these two years,” she says, “but there is still room to try something new and take a course that you wouldn’t have thought you were interested in before.”
