Azmi Ahmad

Azmi Ahmad is a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Medicine, working in the Cardiovascular Molecular Imaging Laboratory to help develop in vivo approaches to characterize calcific aortic valve disease. He received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah and joined the Yale postdoc community in 2020, where shortly-after he joined the YPA and worked within the advocacy committee - both as a member and coordinator. During his time as Advocacy coordinator, Azmi has organized events to promote mental health and mental health first aid training, mindfulness events, art wellness workshop, as well as postdoc appreciation and recognition events for promoting work-life balance. He’s also been representing postdocs with members of administration at the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, and the Trainee Accommodation Committee - where he organized and presented a survey assessing postdoc needs during the re-opening of campus during COVID, and continues to advocate for addressing the unmet needs of the entire postdoc community in terms of equitable benefits of postdoc fellows and associates for pay, healthcare, and childcare. 

 

Azmi has always cared deeply about advocacy and social justice to help positively uplift and support underrepresented communities on issues beyond those that directly affect him. During his graduate school, he served as outreach chair in the Graduate Student Advisory Council, where he helped promote STEM at local schools, and spent his free time volunteering at various IRC programs and farmers markets that support refugees relocating in the community. At the YPA, he has participated in activities that helped fundraise the Annual Run for Breonna Taylor, and issuing factsheets and statements to support Black, Brown, AAPI, Muslim, and Jewish people. Beyond Yale, Azmi is interested in building science advocacy on the institutional and national levels. He believes in creating a diverse, inclusive, and supportive community where academics can feel safe to engage in respectful discussion without subverting the dissemination of their beliefs. Azmi remains closely involved in YPA advocacy and considers himself as an active ally of the Yale Black Postdoctoral Association and Yale Affinity groups.