Antony wanted to become a medical doctor.
When he broke his arm at 12 years old, family
visits to the hospital proved frustrating due to
the long queue of patients who could only see
the surgeon once a week. His dad quipped that
if he worked hard, he could become a doctor
and reduce hospital queues. A seed was planted.
However, in high school, Antony’s interest in
Biology waned in favour of Physics. Coupling
this with a strength in Mathematics, he chose
not to pursue a course that would train him to
become a medical doctor but one that would
train him to support medical doctors. In 2018, he
started a Biomedical Engineering degree at
Kenyatta University, bright-eyed and eager.
Three years later, as the COVID-19 pandemic
raged across the globe, Antony found himself in
a surprising conundrum. He grappled with
uncertainty about how he could apply his
undergraduate
skills
in
an
increasingly
multidisciplinary world. While studying a new
and exciting field, Biomedical Engineering
exposed unexplored areas that left him with
more questions than answers. Its popular
narrow view as a profession where experts
diagnose medical equipment in hospitals left
him unsettled and yearning for more. The vast
amounts of data generated by biomedical
processes sparked a curiosity about their utility.
In
the
enforced
silence
caused
by
an
unexpected lockdown, Antony found clarity in
curiosity—a curiosity that led him down an
unexpected path.
Weaving Biomedical Engineering
with Data Science
To quench his thirst for more, Antony sought
various avenues for growth. He spoke to his
mentors about career prospects. He joined the
Institute
of
Electrical
and
Electronics
Engineering (IEEE) society at his university,
eventually becoming its chairperson. He dove
into online courses on platforms like Coursera to
grasp the fundamentals of Data Science. He
applied for internships, including one at Talent
Bridge Africa (now Krowd Works), where he
researched healthcare trends and produced
over 25 weekly reports, thereby solidifying the
importance of processing and exploring such
data.
Combining
these
experiences,
Antony
recognized that one of the complexities of
biomedical data was in its multimodality; the
combination
of
image,
text,
audio,
and
biological data, which solidified his choice to
weave his biomedical engineering knowledge
with the newly found Data Science skills in
Pandas, Matplotlib, Data Wrangling, and more.
As he progressively learned to combine these
two fields, he acknowledged various gaps in his
ability to apply for external opportunities. First,
he yearned for an environment where he could
be challenged to explore his newfound combo
of disciplines. Second, he struggled to package
and communicate his abilities and expertise. It
did not help that he still used a 5-page CV that
he had crafted in high school.
Antony applied to KamiLimu.
ANTONY
GITAU
5
WHOLE