Katelyn Li will be pursuing an MD at Harvard Medical School through the joint Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Track. She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 2021, where she studied Neuroscience with a secondary in Statistics. After graduating, she received a Fulbright scholarship to conduct computational genomics research in Munich, Germany. 

Katelyn has worked extensively to address health disparities faced by people with disabilities, through policy, journalism, and education. She led efforts at the National Health Services England to implement a nationwide primary care program tailored to the needs of patients with disabilities. She also worked with a nonprofit organization called The Arc to introduce and push for the passage of disability health legislation in her home state of Massachusetts. Furthermore, she is passionate about applying machine learning and computational methods to advance precision medicine and improve healthcare outcomes. she has conducted research on the mechanisms underlying neurological and psychiatric disorders at MIT, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, and the Institute of Computational Biology at Helmholtz Munich. 

Katelyn hopes to pursue a career at the intersection of clinical care, research, and policy, advancing medical innovation in precision medicine and pushing for improved access to and quality of healthcare for patients with disabilities (who are too often misunderstood and overlooked). Her sister’s experiences with autism motivated her early involvement in and passion for disability advocacy. In her free time, she enjoys long-distance running and hiking, exploring history museums, and trying all sorts of new foods.