Hailey Ngyuen:

What inspired you to go into dermatology?

I’ve always struggled with eczema and psoriasis–which were extremely bad–and then it progressed and became even worse as I became a teenager due to hormones. Then I was going to the doctors, and they prescribed me a bunch of these medications that were heavily concentrated. Then there was also the worry about topical steroid withdrawal TSW, so I started looking into more natural ways to help fix my own skin. Such as fixing my diet and also looking into natural skincare ingredients and regimens that could help alleviate my reliance on steroids. 

With that in mind, what activities are you involved in inside and outside of school and how do they relate to your future career as a dermatologist? 

I have focused my curriculum at Seven Lakes around medicine, pursuing a pre-med track and definitely  focusing on dermatology specifically. This year I’m doing clinical rotations to get firsthand experience in the medical field. I’m also a student athletic trainer here at Seven Lakes where I provide critical first aid to athletes during their games. I’m also in clubs like HOSA and am doing skills USA for clinical rotations this year, which are enriching for my health science studies. Skills USA is basically a competition  similar to HOSA where you compete in healthcare specific categories and just show how much knowledge you have in each field of study. 

Now that you’re a senior and applying to colleges, where do you see your career going from here?

I want to go into medicine, obviously, and I want to go into medical school and pursue dermatology. I don’t want my MD in dermatology just to care for patients, but I also want to be able to develop my own skincare line and medicines targeted towards inflammatory skin conditions, such as eczema, psoriasis or rosacea. I’ve been doing a lot of research  into that, and I’ve been looking into different ingredients. For example,  last year for AP research, I wrote a paper on hypochlorous acid, which is an anti -inflammatory molecule that has been gaining popularity recently for inflammatory conditions. I’m just really excited to be able to do my own research and develop a line like that could potentially help individuals suffering from those conditions feel more comfortable in their skin. 

What are some specific issues that you notice among teenagers that are dealing with these skin conditions?

 So I mean I’m talking to in my own experience I’ve it’s hard for you to just get up and get your day started because and go out especially to just because you don’t want to face like the world looking like the way you do and you would be scared I for one was scared to have like all of like my skin showing like that because people are gonna judge you they’re gonna notice things that are out of place and I think it just places a lot of pressure on people especially teenagers we have not a very developed like security system secure security system yeah in ourselves and not fully confident in ourselves yet and yeah I think that’s the biggest thing about these conditions. 

Aside from dermatology, what interests you about science?

 Science is an interesting subject but I like applying science and specifically to medicine like with hands -on I’ve never like wanted to be behind like in a lab completely and just be like working on research all the time I want to be in front of people I want to be working with patients head -on I want to have a one -to -one connection with who I’m talking to and that’s really why I also join training because you’re meeting new athletes, you’re building a connection with these athletes that come in every day, help them get rehabilitated for whatever injury that they’ve developed and that they want to prevent as well. And for football specifically, you’re seeing these players come in to get taped and you just know who has what problems and you’re able to target that specifically. 

What prompted you to research hypochlorous acid, what did you find?

So as well as skincare, I’ve also developed like a big liking to makeup and I was in Sephora one day and I saw this new product by Tower 28 it’s like a very well -known makeup brand and it said hypochlorous acid and “SOS like save our skin” and it was advertised on the front as being like almost life -saving to those with these inflammatory conditions.

 I wondered how can a single bottle do that so I bought one of their sample size it and I tried it on my skin and like within like the next day I could like already notice a significant decrease in light skin’s redness and so I was like is this just me or is this like something that can be applied holistically to all people who suffer from these inflammatory conditions so that’s why I wanted to research the molecule in specific and I actually tested within students at our school with eczema and mostly a lot of like a lot of people said that it was really helpful for their skin and I even had some people try it with acne because it’s also an inflammatory condition and it had reduced their amount of breakouts after like sweat intensive activities by almost like 50 percent so I I was really interested in the molecule and just how it worked just because it’s it’s naturally found on our skin and we produce it ourselves but it has to be stimulated by something in our body

Sarah Lee:

What aspect of medicine are you most interested in? 

I’m most interested in maternal health and fetal medicine because I know a lot of mothers, especially one of my close family friends. She suffered from complications during her pregnancy and we were all really concerned for her. It really sparked this desire inside of me to help mothers and prevent maternal mortality because about 90% of maternal mortality is preventable.

What are you involved in that kind of helps build on that interest? 

I volunteer at Memorial Hermann Hospital and there I interact with a lot of maternal and prenatal and postnatal mothers and I help them with postnatal, like if they’re struggling with infections or lots of common side effects of pregnancy. I also do research at Baylor where I help research drugs that are used on pregnant people. 

Where do you see your career going after high school?

I hope I can get into like a biology program Maybe like somewhere in Texas and then I hopefully want to take the MCAT and then get into a medical school And I see myself hopefully at Baylor medical school, and then I want to go Into maybe OB-GYN