Audrey Zhang

Audrey Zhang is a medical student (class of 2028) at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska. She is also a conservatory-trained harpist from the Orange County School of the Arts. She won 2nd place at the American National Harp Society Competition, 1st place at the Wales International Harp Festival, and has volunteered at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center’s (UCIMC) Music to Heal program since 2019. Her experiences at UCIMC inspired her undergraduate honors thesis from the Early Entrance Program at California State University, Los Angeles on the effects of popular versus therapeutic music on college students' stress levels. She proposed the study, wrote the first draft of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) application, and collected and analyzed data from 302 subjects, ultimately resulting in an Outstanding Oral Presentation Award (30th Student Symposium). After graduating in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Audrey was a clinical research assistant in the Department of Neurology at UCIMC, focusing on applications of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for monitoring patients with brain injuries in the ICU. She has experience in subject screening for study candidates, IRB tracking and modification, study design, data analysis and interpretation, and manuscript composition. She plans to continue conducting clinical research beyond medical school with the goal of becoming an academic physician.