Paul Jarvis

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I graduated from UVM’s College of Medicine in May 2014. Having earned my M.D., I have been employed in UVM/UVM Medical Center’s Neurological Sciences Department as a post-doctoral research fellow, and currently as the lead clinical research coordinator for the UVM Health Network’s stroke program. After several years of both clinical and basic neuroscience research in epilepsy and seizures, my current role entails working with our local stroke program director to build the foundations of a clinical research program within the stroke division, which was essentially non-existent before this director came. I help start clinical research studies and trials related to stroke at the medical center and other hospitals in the health network; I partner with the stroke physicians in carrying out their clinical research protocols, which allows me to continue to build on the clinical skills and knowledge I gained during medical school while I continue to apply for clinical neurology residency training programs. I also continue to work with the epilepsy physicians on their clinical research, even though it isn’t part of my official current position, since that is a particular area of interest for me.

While my mathematics education has not directly prepared/benefited me regarding the clinical aspects of my current position, considering the high focus on biology and physiology, it has helped me with further understanding all of the mathematical/physical models of human physiology so that I can work through any numbers provided in lab tests or direct modeling such as of blood flow, etc. It has helped me better understand the statistics and mathematical models used in the majority of research articles that we use when finding the new data about best treatments for the patients, so I feel that I can better understand the validity of the data presented in those articles better than some of my peers. Additionally, it helps me to be a significant contributor to the statistical analysis in any of the local clinical research I’m involved in. Having the background in both biology and mathematics at SMC causes a higher peak of interest when I see new developments in numerical models of different aspects of medicine, allowing me to focus on what the models are actually representing, rather than getting caught up in the “mess of numbers” as some of my former medical school classmates put it.