Karen Malacon

Karen Malacon, from Cerritos, California, is pursuing an MD and a PhD in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine. She graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology and a minor in global health and health policy. Karen aspires to be a physician-scientist who understands the effects of early life respiratory infection on long-term neurocognitive dysregulation and who develops treatments for COVID-19-induced brain fog. As an undergraduate, Karen interned at an NGO in Kisumu, Kenya, helping to implement a public health awareness program combining soccer and reproductive health, and she served as a Spanish-English interpreter and translator at a pro bono law clinic in Cambridge, Massachusetts, assisting low-income individuals with their asylum, immigration, and domestic violence cases. Karen is a founding member of Frontline Immunity, an organization working to bridge gaps in early vaccine education and engage students to tackle vaccine hesitancy at the grassroots level.