Luke Sagers

Hometown: Provo, UT

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I love picking up new hobbies/skills (even if they end up being short-lived). For example, I recently acquired a small 3-D printer and have been trying to model and print all kinds of random stuff ever since. Some of my longer-term interests are hiking, fly-fishing, and playing basketball. I also enjoy going on weekend trips with my wife and volunteering with my church.

What is your academic background? What research experience did you have before grad school?

I studied statistics with an emphasis in biostatistics at Brigham Young University (BYU), and then I came to the BIG program right after graduating. During my undergrad, I worked for the Computational Health Sciences Lab at BYU where I mainly analyzed large public health type datasets, often with machine learning approaches. I also attended the Harvard Summer Institute in Biomedical Informatics before starting my senior year. That program is fantastic, and I ended up meeting and working with some amazing people, which ultimately led me to apply to BIG.

Why did you choose BIG?

I chose BIG because it sat right in the crossroads of some of my major research interests. Specifically, I wanted to find ways to use machine learning for clinical application. The biggest factor, though, was the quality of people (both professors and peers) that I knew I would be working with in this program.