Foundations of Systems Medicine & Data (High School Track)

Categories: High School Track
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About Course

An introduction to human biology and data literacy for high school students beginning their journey into network and systems medicine — no prior experience required.

Instructors
Dr. Sona Vasudevan

What Will You Learn?

  • Understand how cell biology and organ systems maintain homeostasis through feedback loops
  • Navigate real biomedical databases — UniProt and STRING — used daily by professional researchers
  • Read, interpret, and critique basic data visualizations and statistics
  • Write your first Python code to explore and plot a real dataset
  • Build the foundation needed for Network Medicine & Research Design, the Spring course that follows

Course Content

Human Biology as a System
Explore how cells and organ systems maintain stability through feedback loops, and see how diseases like diabetes and hypertension represent that stability breaking down.

  • Cell Biology Basics
  • Organ Systems Overview
  • Homeostasis and Feedback Loops
  • Case Study: Diabetes as a Broken Feedback Loop
  • Case Study: Hypertension as a Broken Feedback Loop
  • Quiz – 1

Data Literacy
Builds foundational data skills — where biomedical data comes from, how to describe it statistically, and how to read charts critically enough to spot misleading claims.

Introduction to Programming for Science
A hands-on introduction to Python, ending with students writing their first program to load and visualize a real dataset — no prior coding experience assumed.