Joana Mathew

Joana Mathew is is currently a part of the National Science Foundation program, Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), for the STiiP team. In this role, she is able to work on a supervised research project within the study that includes creating outward facing materials and while also contributing to study data collection. She an Integrated Health Sciences major at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she’s graduating with the Class of 2022.

She is currently working on the project, but her favorite part on working on STiiP was working with the team and learning about the different subtopics related to skin tone. As a woman of color herself, learning how skin tone is intertwined with various aspects of healthcare and society as a whole has been an enriching experience.

She says that:

“Being a part of this project has fostered my critical thinking skills and allowed me to explore skin tone on a qualitative and quantitative level in hopes of providing meaningful results as the project progresses.”