MetaCast #14 - Mathematics, Medicine, and Public Health: Renata Proa’s Career Insights

And she's going to share the details on how to build such a successful career, research-oriented career. And also going to talk to us about funding, about visa, and all these opportunities that have surrounded her career. But also some of them may apply to you as well. So Renata, thank you so much for joining. It's an honor to welcome you here to MetaGast. Thank you. It's my honor to be here. I'm very, very happy.

Fantastic. Can you start off by some introduction, a little bit about your background, where you're originally from? Absolutely. It's very hard, actually, always to answer this question because I have such an unusual, unorthodox background. So it's just very hard to think how I'm going to sum this up and say a coherent story. But I'm originally from Brazil. I'm originally from Sao Paulo. I grew up actually in Santos de Andes Campos, which is an hour drive from Sao Paulo.

And I studied, I went to university at the University of Sao Paulo, but I did a very also unorthodox undergrad program called the Molecular Sciences course, which is an initiative at the University of Sao Paulo that tries to create an interdisciplinary course for students, similar to what we have here because in Brazil you need to know exactly what you're going to study before you get into the university. I think most countries it is like this.

And we have a very old-fashioned system which doesn't even have like an undergrad program in neuroscience. So they created this like 30 years ago that allows students to study math, computer computer science, biology, physics, and mathematics, and then just craft their own education that feels like a small master's degree. So I did this program, and then I studied a lot of mathematics in the second part in my last two years where I could choose what I was going to do.

And I ended up getting like another degree in applied computational mathematics with a focus in control systems, so electrical engineering.

molecular sciences and then mathematics yeah electrical engineering that was a lot it's kind of like the united states in that sense because a little bit in brazil in brazil you know like i i went into medical school at age 16 it's crazy you're like in high school and you don't know anything about life like i'm gonna be a doctor exactly there's no undergraduate in the u.s that you know you go through like undergraduate and there's advantages and disadvantages of both

systems, of course, like everything in life. But what you did gives you an exposure to so many different areas. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was just even like going back to get my degree in mathematics wasn't something that was common after doing the interdisciplinary program. And I received a lot of criticism from my professors. It's like, why are you wasting your time going for another

degree? You already have your interdisciplinary degree. And it was really funny because it actually proved very useful because it's very just very useful to say that i'm a mathematician it gives me some background to say i'm a mathematician because molecular sciences gives the impression that i'm a biologist yeah and i'm i'm not um but anyway i i did this and then during this like two years um i had to to choose a research project and i was i was working with

music at the time. That was my main focus. Is there anything you don't know? Do you know about astronomy? Several things. I don't know much about astronomy. But I was working with music and I was interested in neuroscience. My whole thing has always been mathematics. So I was really trying to combine those things. And one professor that I had that was a biochemistry professor, It was very important in my career. It supported me in very critical moments.

She introduced me to a researcher at Hospital Albert Einstein that we were talking about and to study dystonia. A lot of people, especially in neuroscience, don't even know what dystonia is, but it's a neurological neurodegenerative disease that is also common in musicians. So I went to study dystonia and I had an Einstein and the project went really well.

And from there, I was invited to work in a project for the public health system in Brazil to create a national image database with AI solutions for the public health system. That's incredible. Yeah, it was very, very, very nice. And I started off in my last year of undergrad of the crazy molecular sciences course.

And it was very fun because I also, like later on, I got hired as a data scientist and I was responsible for taking care of the skin cancer algorithms that we were developing for the public health system in Brazil. And from there, I also had more of a strategic view for things on what we should do. So I ended up going more for a consultant position. I want to ask a question about that because a lot of our listeners are from Brazil.

And it's pretty amazing that in our junior still stage of your career, you had such an opportunity, you know, in a leadership position, a national project. What do you think? And because we always hear this about in Brazil, like there's no opportunities for research. You know, it's so hard, you know. So it might be true that it is hard, but you've been very successful in that environment in Brazil. what do you credit that success to? Is it just like having the right mentors?

Is it just like having all that phenomenal training and, you know, mathematics, you know, computational data science? You know, what is it that you credit the success to? That is, I love this question. I don't think there's a very, a single answer to that. I think it's a combination of things. I think for sure I have always been very ambitious and very passionate. And I think that that takes you to different places. But that's for sure not enough. I do think we have like very few opportunities.

And I was very lucky to be to end up at Einstein, which is one of the places today where we can do research with a lot of like with structure in Brazil, with the distance structure in Brazil. So I was very lucky to be there. And I think one of the things that is very, I'd say, very particular about my story and that is not very common is that I like many things. So very often I go for the opportunity instead of just what you want to do, just because I want to do many things.

And I was very bold and like I never thought about working with skin cancer. But I was like, actually, I could have chosen to work with neurodegenerative diseases in this project. But it seemed like where there was more impact, where there was a more cohesive team that I could learn more from was the skin cancer group. And I was like, I want to work with skin cancer. So I think, for example, probably this wouldn't have happened.

I wouldn't have grown so much if I had chosen to work with neurodegenerative diseases in the same project. You mentioned that critical word, which is team, right? Having the right team around you, the right mentors, is always a key determinant in the successful stories that I hear of people that come on this podcast. And then you came to the United States. Can you walk us through that decision? Why did you decide to do that? Every decision is just also not...

There are so many other things that influence that.

for sure one of the big things for me to like that made me come to the United States was the pandemic because I had a lot of opportunities meanwhile like when I started doing this project I told you I was very passionate about neuroscience and about how to connect this with mathematics so I was doing I started like when I started at Einstein this this project for the public health system it was when I started working on my second bachelor's in mathematics and I started working

with a professor that was a big name in theoretical neuroscience in Brazil that is the combination of neuroscience and mathematics as these people those mathematicians trying to do a mathematical theory for the brain and we don't have many people doing that but there there is a center called neuro mat at USP the University of Sao Paulo for that and I was working with the head of this Institute and I already had like my PhD in mathematics already on the way

like this professor didn't even want me to finish my undergrad he was like you should start your phd that the second undergrad yeah you should start your phd already so i had all these things i had music like i had a lot of music things going on in brazil as well and then i probably even though i always wanted to explore i wouldn't have left the country at that moment probably just because i had so many good opportunities at the moment it sounds like and then the pandemic hit

And I think it was a moment for everybody to think like, Ooh, what are we doing? And then was the moment that I started considering applying for a PhD abroad and I started like searching. And how does that work? Is that even possible? And you knew nothing. And I started I ended up in this mentorship program that was created by a Brazilian professor at Yale, which was fantastic for me. I had like a mentor that was incredibly supportive and for sure

without his help, I wouldn't have gotten into the PhD program. Because this is something I think very interesting to talk about, because you can be very qualified, you can have a lot of an amazing CV, if you don't know how to write a good personal statement and put together your candidacy, it's just very hard. And we don't learn that in Brazil. We don't learn how to write

a personal statement. I think it was the hardest thing for me was to actually write like two pages saying I am fantastic and you should hire me because of. It really took me a year. So yeah, I came to the US to do what I always thought was my big dream to do this mathematical theory of the brain. But meanwhile, when I was like applying was the time that I was hired at this project. And I really, really fell in love for the public health system with AI.

And when I went to quit my job, my boss said, don't you want to continue working remotely? And that's how I am still working there. And just to bridge in what happened was that I moved here to start my PhD in computational neuroscience, and I continued working at Einstein, a small number of hours remotely. And I started, like, I went to Brazil and I participated in a datathon with Professor Lausale from MIT. And I got invited to work in his lab for the summer.

That was my first year in a PhD. And it was just really good. I went to a few datathons with him and we got a few prizes. and I was just, I started thinking how much I have more impact working with healthcare than I had just like sitting in a room and trying to write by myself a theory for the brain that it is, it is, of course it is important, but I feel like I, a lot of my background and where I'm from, I really wanted to do something that would improve lives in my country.

Well, I think it's a challenge because you have so many skills, you know, like where are you going to apply those. So going back to the PhD application, and then we'll talk about, you know, you decided to switch a little bit more into the healthcare field, but the decision to apply for the PhD itself, you mentioned that the pandemic influenced that. It was a sort of a trigger for you to pursue the, you know, the move to the U.S. You continue to work in Brazil, but can you walk

us through what the actual application consists of? Because a lot of our listeners, are interested in a career in the U.S. And for a lot of them, it's through like medicine, being doctors and applying for residency, which is the way, the track that I did.

But then there's this other avenue of applying for a PhD and maybe not a large proportion of them will apply for a PhD in mathematics, but I think still there's a lot to learn from your experience into applying for that, coming from a foreign country. What was that like? It was, as I said, I think it's, it's a little bit of a myth to think that it's very unlikely to actually crack into the system without having the support.

I do know some people that have done it, but without having the support of someone who has done these kind of applications just by talent. You may have the most amazing CV, but it just takes a lot to actually put together this application. I think mostly the application is CV, And the personal statement where you're going to write those two pages saying, like, explaining what you've done, what do you want to do, and why you're capable of doing this. Who do you want to work with and why.

And how those things connect. Yes. And telling the story is very hard. And then, of course, recommendation letters, which is also a big problem because not every Brazilian professor knows how to write a recommendation letter. Super agree. In the United States style. That is a lot about pumping up. So I think this is a process that is just very hard to go through. I think, at least for me, it was emotionally difficult. I think our culture as Brazilians is a lot about being humble.

And you just need to, like, have someone writing a letter saying, this is the most amazing student I've ever had. Absolutely. And it's hard. It's hard. So I think this is the process.

actually you have the personal statement and you have the recommendation letters they're going to do kind of the same thing but from an external perspective and everything needs to come together you got to be very smart on the people who are you're asking the letter for did you have to take any exams that is specific for application no I think like for even for science PhDs there is the some like graduate level tests that you got to take often that you used they used to be

more common that's called it's the GRE I don't know if you need to do that for medicine I think some programs some post-graduates programs like master's and PhD will ask for that too I think today at least in my year people were not asking for that anymore I think some programs some fields still ask for it, but I didn't have to take it. And I'm very glad.

But yeah, no, it was just more, more does the application CV experience for, of course, like having written like scientific papers is a big thing. I think it's just, you really need to write an application that is gonna like call attention, call the attention of the people who are evaluating this, not coming from one of the big universities or even from the United States. Unfortunately, it's just harder. You got to do a lot more to stand out. So, yeah, I think there is the possibility.

I don't know if like you're thinking about how this career could be interesting for a medical doctor as well. But I know that you can, for example, do the PhD and after sometimes you have like a facilitated entry to medical school. Yeah. Well, not even then. That's absolutely true. But the PhD itself is a career. Oh, yeah. You can get that and then you could, you know, work in that field.

Yes. Whether it's in education or in industry, you could use the PhD. You know, a lot of our listeners are MDs and we're so tied to this career at the bedside and seeing being in clinic and being in the hospital. But for our audience, especially important to remind them, you do a PhD, that's a career in and of itself. Yeah, absolutely.

I actually know quite a bunch of people who studied medicine more because of, I don't know, I wouldn't say pressure, but because they thought that's what they had to do if they wanted to do research. It's like what we were saying earlier. It's also because, especially where you're from, you're 15 years old, 16 years old, you decide to go to medical school.

And for some people like myself, you really enjoy it and then other people don't and they see research as the career that they would like to have. It's not uncommon at all to have these people who go to medical school and then just become full-time researchers. Exactly. And then you wonder, did you actually need to go to medical school? I think for some people, of course, it helps. But sometimes you can just consider it a possibility of just being in a medical school.

Yeah, especially in the United States, because then we're really talking about plenty of research opportunities, grants. Of course, it's a career that's very different from the clinical career in the sense that you always have to be thinking about funding and research and the next project and getting results and publishing. There's a lot of pressure in that sense. But it's a fantastic career, too. Can you talk to us a little bit about funding?

Like about in a PhD, do you have to pay the university? Do they pay you? Is there a stipend? How much is it if you want to share that? That'd be great for our listeners. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. For the PhD, I don't know if it's, I think for sure all the STEM programs in all the like very good universities here in the US, you're going to be fully funded and receive a stipend.

I think of course it varies from each program and from each university how much is your stipend but it's not going to change dramatically I do know some programs uh more in mathematics or like other fields that are not precisely stem like by stem sorry uh yeah I think I don't know if actually mathematics uh I think this is actually a um uh reflects of my perception of mathematics not being science and more like it's even a language, but it's not precisely science.

I think I was thinking more science. I might be wrong. I might be using the wrong terms here. But for sure, anything in like biology, anything involving medicine, anything involving engineering, you're going to have, even physics, you're probably going to have like a PhD that is fully funded with a stipend. And the stipends, I would say they go between $40,000 a year and $55,000. Okay. But normally the university is going to give you some support.

I mean, I think when we think about coming from Brazil, this is pretty good. Yeah. Just to give people some perspective, let me know if you agree with this. But I think that that stipend that you mentioned is probably enough to pay the bills, not for a whole lot more. Yeah. especially with increased cost of living in the US, Boston, New York. You're going to be able to barely get by with that, but it's enough for you to get that education. Yeah, exactly.

I think when you think about PhD or even like, I don't know how it works in math school, but the problem is that it's a long time. But it also depends so much on the city you're living in. True. I do have some friends in smaller cities, and they receive that, and they're basically rich. But for example, I was doing my PhD in New York City. So that was a little bit more complicated, a little bit tighter.

But I think also there are lots of things that the university helps you with that makes this more easy to live with. The help of living? They do help you with subsidized housing. Okay. They do help you. It's not cheap. But it helps. It would be impossible. I think it would be very, very hard if you didn't have that. That normally covers your bills as well. Even travel. I think that was one of the things that is very helpful. I think it also depends a lot on department.

It depends on lots of things. But in the program that I am, very often they pay for my travel, like any conference that I wanted to go. They also paid for a computer. They gave me a computer. Yeah. Yeah. The perks. Yeah. There's a lot that helps. And free food and several events. So the salary that Renata mentioned, about $40,000 to $50,000 a year, will surely vary from place to place, institution to institution. And it's a per year amount. Okay. Just to give you guys that perspective.

Very good, Renata. And then I also wanted to ask you about the visa. Do most people who come from foreign countries should do a PhD or an MPH? do most of them come under a student visa, an F visa? I know a bunch of people that also come with a J visa, which I don't know how this gets decided. I have actually no idea. I'd say in a PhD, most people are F students. Can you tell us a little about the F visa, about like advantages, disadvantages?

Like I know a lot about the J because that's how I trained in my residency. And there's advantages and things that are not so good about the J. What about the F? Does it allow you to work, for example? What I'm going to say, I'm not, I can say what is possible. I am not sure if I'm going to do the right comparison, but it doesn't allow us to really work. You need to, you can work up to 20 hours a week if the university, if your university approves it.

And it's normally like, or if it's on campus, it doesn't have to be related to your field of study. Okay. But if the university approves it, it can be off campus. And considering that it's supporting, like the university is going to say, okay, this is aligned to what you do and this is helping you. So you can work up to 20 hours a week. Great. Yeah, that's a plus for sure. I think one of the differences is that maybe the F doesn't require you to return to your country for some time.

I think the J does have some. True, your home requirement is the name of that rule. Yeah, no, that's great. My wife's under an F visa right now in law school, and she has got to do like a summer internship, a paid position. She actually got paid a lot more than a resident would. It's like amazing. I should have gone to law school. Yeah, you can definitely do internships, and you can work in tech, for example, and then you get paid a lot. If an F visa, that is a positive thing.

And I think there's a rule also that once you're done with the training, Like there's some time in which you can work afterwards. Oh, yeah. OPT. OPT, exactly. Yes, exactly. I don't know precisely all the rules for that, but I think it's one year up to three years. You can work in that field that you just graduated in. Fantastic. And then let's talk more a little about that decision to transition into the MPH here in Boston. So you're right now at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Yes. What are you studying exactly? And why did you decide to transition from the PhD in mathematics to the MPH? Yeah, I was actually doing the PhD in computational slash theoretical neuroscience. But it is indeed like I was in this department that was just made up of physicists and mathematicians trying to do neuroscience. That's how I see it. Like rooms with a lot of equations written on the walls. Yeah. That's my simple brain thinking math. Yes. It's not inaccurate. I'm also a mathematician.

So, yes, as I was saying before, after I came here, I continued working at Einstein. And I just I think also when you go out of your country, I had never lived abroad before. And when you go out, you just have a very different perspective and you just realize how much you also care for your people. I think the sense of identity like arises a lot. I actually never spoke about it, but I think this is this is a point.

I just always think that it was sort of a continuum that I was already falling in love very much with the impact that I felt like I had in public health. But I went back to Brazil and I said I participated in this data found that brought me here in the summer. I did some like summer research here at MIT last summer. And the professor told me I should like take more time in his lab. And he suggested I had applied to the MPH.

And I was already in a moment feeling like my job and my PhD were going in very separate ways. And I really felt that I needed some time to think and to understand more public health. Because I am this mathematician that was developing algorithms for the public health system. but that did not really have any training on public health. And I think not even a lot of people there did not have particular, like training particularly in public health.

And that was something that I was always curious because I remember developing this algorithm for screening skin cancer. And I remember this like very amazing doctor telling me, we want this algorithm that is more conservative in a sense of like we want to avoid, we don't want any false negatives. We don't want to miss like a melanoma, for example, but we want to reduce the false positives. And I was like, but why and how do I do this?

So I was really, okay, how do I get these insights of why am I doing this algorithm for? I think like the whole thing about data science, It's not so much about training an algorithm or even the equations that are going on underneath your algorithm. It's a lot about, like, why am I doing this? And which data am I using? And to answer those questions, you really just need to understand what is the problem that you're trying to solve.

And I felt like I was trying to solve a problem that I didn't really understand. And I felt like I really wanted to study public health. So those things came together in this decision of like, I want to apply for an MPH. And I knew that there was a Brazilian professor because my whole thing was that I wanted to work in Brazil. It wouldn't make any sense for me to just do an MPH focusing in the United States. So it was very important to me.

I only applied to Harvard because I knew that there were people working in Brazil, focusing in Brazil in the department. And that's why actually I chose global health because I knew that there was Marcia Castro, which is a fantastic researcher. I think like she's a big name and everybody admires her because she's fantastic. So I was like, I want to go to that department and learn from her and from this environment. So yeah, that was a little bit of a decision. That's fantastic.

And you enjoying it so far? I'm loving it. I'm loving it. I'm loving it way more than I thought. Yeah. Yeah. And also that the academic environment here, I wouldn't say, I think it's just very different from the sort of department that I was in. It's just so many other things, like even from a politics side of things, it's really the type of thing that I never learned. And it has been so, so interesting and transformative to learn these things.

And to, And I think also that the type of people that I met in my program are people from different parts of the world that are so motivated to making big changes in the reality of their countries. They're very motivated to like making people's lives better. And I think this creates just like an incredible community. And I think this is one of the most precious things of my experience here so far is the people that I have met and that I continue to meet.

every day here like like yourself uh you just meet fantastic people um so i think this this has been a big thing of my experience here it's a great it's a great place to be for sure no doubt about it let me ask you this you know someone has so much different diverse experiences like you and and knowledge in so many different areas i wonder if you have insight from being that person on the inside but like do you feel like that one area helps you to do better on the other like having

Knowledge in mathematics helps you here, and having the knowledge in neuroscience helps you there. Yes, yes, for sure. I think the whole thing is in the keys in making these connections. I don't think they're always obvious. I think there are some things that come very naturally. I think sometimes I don't even realize that I have some advantage in something for having a different perspective.

But for sure, you just always bring a fresh perspective and very new ideas to what you're doing, especially when you're interdisciplinary because you know things from different places. And I was hearing, I think it was in one of the talks that I had in a class at Harvard. I'm so sorry. I was hearing this in one of the talks that creativity is not about actually coming up with something completely new that you never heard. It's about applying something in a different context and reframing it.

It helps when you have that many contacts. You know so many contacts. I think it was something in entrepreneurship talk that I was, and people were saying the most brilliant ideas were from people that just saw something in one context and they decided to, wait, what if I think of this thing or I do this in this completely different context? And it makes sense. It's something that people were not thinking.

And it's just because you were in this different environment and you understood how this different environment worked and how people thought. I think this is something very interesting. You learn different ways of thinking. You learn a political way of thinking. You learn a very mathematical way of thinking. You learn a physicist way of thinking.

There are so many differences and it's just very, I think it always gives you a very good understanding of people and how to bring people together to work together when you have different experiences and you're interdisciplinary. No doubt. I'm going to switch a little bit off topic now, off research, but I want to take your view on Boston versus New York. We're recording this in TD Garden, the home of Boston sports.

And I'm not sure if you're a sports person, but there's a lot of rivalry between Boston and New York. A lot of people have different opinions between the two cities. I can tell you mine, but what's yours? I'm curious about yours. I was just actually talking about this right before entering here. When I came here in the summer, I said I was at MIT. I must say, I actually really didn't like the city. Really? Yeah. But I think it was because it was summer. It was very empty.

And I wasn't really involved in the community. And so I came here really thinking, okay, it's one year. And I'm very motivated to what I'm studying with the program. And I'm going to manage it.

I've been falling in love with the city every day and I'm already like sad and feeling this fear of missing out of like I'm gonna leave because I I'm really loving it I think it's just very different like coming here and being part of a community so I just really think just this is just to say that I think how much you like a city it's so much about the community than the city itself but having that said I love New York I was just going to say maybe I ought to give

New York a second chance then because I've only been a couple of times and I did not like New York. I know a lot of people that really don't like New York or actually when I got here the guy on the end of the store back doors he was just like being friendly and starting to like talk and I was like where are you from? I was like from Brazil and what do you like are you liking Boston? I was like, yeah, I'm actually liking way more than I thought I would.

And I said, I was in New York before and he was like, I hate New York. So I think it's just very personal. If you like busy cities and if you like this craziness, you're going to like New York. And I really like that. I think that the artistic part, like some of the things that you have artistically going on in New York is priceless. So for me, I think that's a big thing.

but I'm really loving Boston I think it is really like it has a good balance of being a big city and a small city and the academic environment here is insane it's amazing I think they're different and I like change so I really like this idea of being here and there so yeah I love both but I think my personality works very well with New York nice to wrap up ranata is uh what's the next step in your career i mean there's so many great things

going on you do they have the mph the phd which you're going to wrap up in the next few years there's brazil there's the u.s there's a global health now you could apply your skills many different places of the world what what are you thinking what's going on for your mom that's that's that's a great question i think there there's a lot a lot coming um i for sure i need to go back to my PhD program and finish it. And my next step is very much on how I bridge things.

So I was telling you that I'm now working in this new project also for the public health system in Brazil with climate and population health, specifically focusing on equity and focusing on how this affects particularly black Brazilians. So I'm really thinking on how this connects to neuroscience and how can I bridge those things. And because I'm for sure continuing to work in this project and I'm looking for common venues.

One of the things that I'm very interested in and that I've been studying a lot is mental health and how climate and environment affects mental health. I've been very interested in planetary health. That is also the connection of everything. I think, as I was saying, like my interdisciplinary background just helps me integrate things in a very unique way. So planetary health is all about that.

It's really about understanding how everything is connected to get you to the health, to give you the health you have. So and it's something it's very interesting that we don't think, for example, animal health is just so connected to our health. like COVID, like came from bats. Like some of the biggest epidemics we had were viruses that came from animals, right?

So how this all connects and how the environment now with climate change is going to affect all of this, it's all, for my mathematical mind, a very interesting modeling question. So that's probably the direction that I'm going. I'm also very interested in looking for ways to bridge the musical part. But that is very bold. I think there aren't many people doing this.

And I've just really been thinking for sure it really plays a role in the way that I think and the way that I interact with people and the passion that I have for the things that I do. But I've been really looking for opportunities to try to bring art together. And I actually does have a lot to do with the mental health part because culture is such an important part of mental health. And art is also a very, very important way to actually assess emotions.

And I think also talking about emotions is something that we should be doing more in science. I think we lose a lot when we pretend we do not have emotions and that we can actually be very objective. We want to be very objective, but at the point that we deny it and we don't talk about it, I think a lot of things do not go the way we want. True. We're so used to p-values. Yeah, exactly. Very good. So, yeah, I think there's a lot to explore and I'm very open-minded always.

Well, Renata, it's a fantastic story and it's been great to meet you. and to hear your story. And thank you for sharing it with the audience here in Metacast. I look forward to seeing the next steps in your career. So many great things, so many good possibilities. I'm excited to see what comes next. I'm very excited too. And I'm so honored to be here today with you. Thank you so much for inviting me. And I'm so happy. And I hope sharing my experience can give anyone any inspiration or insights.

For sure it will. So guys, this is Metacast, the podcast of the Meta-Analysis Academy. I had the honor to welcome here Renata Proa today, who shared her story from a successful career, multidisciplinary career in Brazil to coming to the U.S. for a Ph.D. in neuroscience, now an MPH here at Harvard. I forgot to say this disclaimer in the beginning, but what we discussed here is not affiliated with the institutions where we work. The opinions are our own.

And I also take this opportunity to invite you to get to meet the Meta-Analysis Academy. me join our waitlist to learn how to publish systematic reviews and meta-analysis to advance your career. And also check out our other episodes of Metacast as well. Renata, thank you so much. Great having you. Thank you so much. ♪