Staff Profile: Pearl Go, Research Data Analyst
As a child growing up in the Philippines, Pearl Go remembers watching her mother, a doctor, organize medical missions for people who relied on free healthcare for survival. “It was almost always a celebration,” Go remembers. “The patients came to rely on these resources and there was always a sense of joy because we were able to help them.”
Although Go now spends her days organizing data for healthcare professionals as research data analyst for the NUCATS Institute’s Applied Research Informatics Group (ARIG), her career in academic medicine began to take shape with a love for equitable healthcare instilled in her by her parents at a young age. As a child, Go developed a passion for ensuring that children with special needs are set up for success through medical support and resources.
Before coming to Northwestern, Go earned her Master’s degree in Psychology with a Child and Family Development specialization from Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. She also earned a certification in The Greenspan Floortime Approach, an evidence-based intervention predicated on the importance of meeting children on their level — both developmentally and physically — in order to maximize communicating, interacting, and learning. Go worked as an educator and developmental therapist for children with special needs for years before finding a role with a nonprofit that sought to review Chicago early childhood programs. The position saw her career evolve into work focused on data analytics and management.
“Children with special needs often have difficulty building relationships and it can be challenging for their families to support them. One goal early in my professional career was to provide these children and their families with the strategies and tools they needed to grow into their best selves,” she explains.
For me, StudyTracker is a collection of stories. It documents each participant’s and cohort’s journey — making sure that the lessons learned and insights gained are shared and can be applied to the populace.”
Go found joy in supporting work that directly supported children, and has developed a similar passion for informatics support that accelerates discoveries to improve public health.
“The work we do at ARIG leads to the best possible patient care and innovation,” she says.
Her days as ARIG’s research data analyst are filled with a variety of important tasks, including creating instruments for program evaluation, creating and managing REDCap databases that capture clinical study data, building data migration pipelines, as well as generating reports and visualizations to show the impact of NUCATS’ work supporting investigators, clinicians, and communities at Northwestern and beyond.
One ARIG development that Go finds particularly exciting is StudyTracker, a set of web-based clinical research tools that help to improve efficiency, safety, and security for participants in scientific studies.
“For me, StudyTracker is a collection of stories,” says Go. “It documents each participant’s and cohort’s journey — making sure that the lessons learned and insights gained are shared and can be applied to the populace.”
In her role at NUCATS, Go recognizes that thinking outside the box and soft skills are just as important as procedures and technical skills. “Science isn’t all numbers and charts. There has to be humanity behind what you do,” She says.
Go remains excited about ARIG’s continuing commitment to meet the changing needs of the research community and to provide investigators with the tools they need to enhance patient care. She firmly believes that research makes lives better and plans to continue improving lives in any way she can.
“My work at ARIG reminds me a lot of the work I used to do with children,” Go says. “Every research project is like a child — it is unique, full of joy, and has the potential to change the world.”
Written by Morgan Frost
