Originally from Nigeria where he worked as a pharmacist for three years, University of South Florida College of Public Health doctoral student Mr. Nnadozie Emechebe came to the South Florida four years ago to earn his MPH.
Upon graduating with his MPH in 2015, Mr. Emechebe worked for Bristol-Myers Squibb as a senior analyst. Now a first-year doctoral student in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics, Mr. Emechebe has won a 2017 SAS Junior Professional Award.
[Photo: Doctoral student Nnadozie Emechebe, with his SAS Junior Professional Award (Photo by Natalie Preston).]
SAS is a software suite that can alter, manage and retrieve data from a variety of sources and conduct statistical analysis on the data.
The SAS Junior Professional Award is geared towards young professionals with less than three years of working with SAS at their place of work, excluding the time that is spent using it in school.
The award was presented at the SAS Global Forum held at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
During the forum, participants attend workshops, presentations, demos and networking opportunities where they are able to exchange ideas with experts and peers.
“Being able to attend the global forum this year was truly magical, besides the fact that it was being held at Disney! It was well organized and I met a lot of interesting people,” Mr. Emechebe said. “It was really engaging and informational. It’s definitely an event I look forward to attending next year.”
SAS Junior Professional Award winners were able to attend the global forum and workshops for free.
“Winning this award was gratifying. It is motivational because it tells you that you are on the right track,” he said. “To be honest it made me want to use SAS even more and now I plan to attend the global forum as much as possible.”
Mr. Emechebe’s public health interest started while he was in pharmacy school.
“We had a course in public health and it caught my attention,” he said. “I was captivated by the idea of working towards a collective goal because in clinical settings you have interactions with individuals, but in public health what you accomplish can affect the entire population and that was really fascinating.”
After he graduates, Mr. Emechebe intends to focus on the effects of medication on populations in the field of pharmaceutical epidemiology.
“My over-arching goal is to help people and save lives in the best way I can,” Mr. Emechebe said.
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