To propose an independent concentration, students must submit a detailed description, an outline of the methods and tools necessary to perform research in the field, a proposed course list, a senior capstone or honors thesis concept, a bibliography citing at least 10 scholarly works relevant to the concentration, and a letter of support from a faculty sponsor who has agreed to serve as the student’s primary adviser. The proposals are reviewed by the independent concentration subcommittee of the College Curriculum Council, a group of faculty, deans and students chaired by the dean of the College.

The process is rigorous but rewarding, and many generations of independent concentrators have gone on to receive major fellowships, pursue graduate degrees, launch startups and take on public service roles — often in fields directly connected to their tailored course of study, according to Chang. 

“Independent concentrators view the complexity of their research questions by searching for answers that should not only make sense to them and members of the academy, but the greater public,” Chang said. “They are invested in bringing theory to practice.” 

In these Q&As, four graduating seniors reflected on their experiences designing their degrees and what lies ahead in their respective fields. 

Q: What inspired you to pursue this independent concentration? 

I came into Brown expecting to study biology and philosophy. But with double-concentrating and pursuing pre-med, it was just looking like a lot, so I started thinking about an independent concentration the spring of my freshman year. Then, that summer, I was shadowing and doing some research at a hospital. I was in in pediatric cardiogenetics, so we were seeing young kids with heart defects. The first time I shadowed there, a doctor sent a 5-year-old boy out of the room to talk with his mother about some test results. He had an arrythmia, which meant he could drop dead without warning. The way the doctor delivered the news, though, was kind of saying it just like that. So that’s what really set into motion this idea of what it means to be empathized with — and more specifically, what it means to not be empathized with. I’ve really tried to broaden my understanding of empathy and how it works, specifically within the caring professions. 

Q: What has been your favorite part about developing this concentration during your time at Brown? 

First, I get to hear about people’s passions and all the wild stuff that people know so much about and are so invested in, and it’s amazing. Brown is a school that’s filled with passionate people who are so interested in what they’re doing. I think the independent concentrators are a subset of that subset; not to say that we’re more passionate than anyone else, but we are definitely loud about it. 

I also think a lot about [Adjunct Lecturer in Anthropology] Michael Berman, who taught a course on suffering and compassion. It was just the perfect class that came at the perfect time with the perfect professor. After every class, I would walk with him for 20 minutes, and I was able to build a really great relationship with him. Being able to expand myself through those conversations and break down everything I thought I knew about empathy and reconceptualize it at the beginning of my independent concentration journey was really special. I am grateful to have had that experience, and that he kind of took me under his wing a little bit. 

Q: How will your concentration help shape your career path? 

Next year, I’ll be getting a master’s degree in dialogue, health and society — which is basically interaction analysis applied in the health care setting — from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. What I’m really interested in there is the perfect bridge between what I’m doing now and medical school. I want to understand how empathy is practiced — not just the theory of empathy, but a focus on being empathetic or not empathetic in the caring professions, from the carer’s perspective. This is absolutely going to come into play in my future medical career. My idea on what field of medicine I want to be in will change seven trillion times, but all I know is that it will probably be something clinical, rather than research-focused. I think that is my calling: something about being with people and helping them in the worst moments of their lives draws me in. 

Q: What inspired you to pursue this independent concentration? 

Going back to high school, I was always interested in psychology, neuroscience and computers. My first year of college, I went to UC San Diego and studied cognitive science and interdisciplinary computing in the arts, which was really exciting. But I wanted to think more about philosophy and morality, which is kind of why I transferred to Brown. At Brown, the cognitive science curriculum wasn’t necessarily a one-to-one with my previous experience — it was more like pre-med, and I didn’t want to dedicate myself solely to that. My final push was meeting one of my now very close friends who had also done an independent concentration in human-computer interface (HCI) and design. 

Q: What has been your favorite part about developing this concentration during your time at Brown? 

My independent concentration experience has been very personal. I didn’t just see it as a discipline; it was representative of my entire learning journey throughout university. As I’ve taken more classes in my independent concentration, my perspective on the field has definitely evolved. At first, I was very interested in designing specific interfaces. But then I took a class on race, gender and technology in everyday life, which is part of the science, technology and society (STS) program, with [Lecturer] Xan Chacko and she was so amazing. She really contextualized HCI as a one-to-one relationship and STS as a one-to-many relationship. That has affected my perspective on my own concentration and the impact that it could have on broader society. 

Q: How will your concentration help shape your career path? 

For the past two summers, I’ve been working in health care IT as a user experience design intern, working on health care interfaces and how providers and patients use technology. I think that is definitely a space that I would return to. As a next step though, I’ve decided to go into design consulting, which is kind of a pivot, but it will expose me to a lot of different industries and help me see where I want to apply HCI in design. But I think my biggest long-term target post-grad is increasing accessibility to technology through design. 

Q: What inspired you to pursue this independent concentration? 

I always knew I wanted to pursue an independent concentration. In fact, the main reason I wanted to attend Brown was the promise that I could pursue my academic interests across disciplines. I leveraged the Open Curriculum to take classes across concentrations that sounded interesting me. I found myself gravitating to my courses in urban studies and environmental studies…  I knew by the end of my freshman year that I wanted to study the intersection of urban studies and environmental studies, but I still needed to get more specific if I was to actually create a degree in this area.

The fall of my sophomore year I took Cities in Mind with [Professor of American Studies and Urban Studies] Samuel Zipp. This course was the missing piece that helped me understand how I could actually study these issues together. It focused on the intellectual and cultural history of western urbanism over the past century, and I realized that this cultural lens on the problems of warming cities was the way I wanted to study them. So I created urban environmentality to study warming cities from the perspective of lived experience, with a particular focus on how the social life of cities mediates the challenges of urban climate change. 

Q: What has been your favorite part about developing this concentration during your time at Brown? 

The highlight of the entire degree is the one requirement for any independent concentrator: an independent study with their adviser. In the fall of my junior year, Professor Zipp and I created the independent study titled “Ideas of the Self.” Over that semester, I had the chance to read and analyze some of the most interesting texts I have ever read at Brown. Bi-weekly, Professor Zipp and I would meet and discuss what I was learning and uncovering, and more than anything, that is what made the experience so valuable. Having the chance to take a course one-on-one with my adviser not only allowed me to learn an unparalleled amount about the topics I was interested in, it also brought me closer to him and I learned how to be a better student in the process. I think this is unique and I am so thankful to have had that opportunity.

Q: How will your concentration help shape your career path? 

I plan to pursue a career in sustainable urban development. I am really excited about applying urban environmentality in this space, because the field in general is at a real turning point that I think a perspective like mine is well-positioned to facilitate change. This world has long been dominated by engineers and architects, with mixed results stemming from their general top-down approach to issues of urban sustainability. Recently, the industry has begun to transition towards a more community-oriented model of sustainable urban development, but this is not without growing pains. Urban environmentality is about bridging the gaps between experts and the people who actually experience cities every day, and I am confident that my background can help governments and private firms help do the same. I am so excited to get out in the real world and actually make the cities I live in better and more environmentally conscious for everyone.

Q: What inspired you to pursue this independent concentration?

I was captivated by how rapidly AI was transforming the world. When GPT-3 and AlphaFold demonstrated leaps in language understanding and protein folding, I knew there was an opportunity to harness those advances to better understand the human brain. I designed my concentration to sit at that intersection: using computational tools to model the brain and letting biological principles guide cutting-edge AI. I was driven by the idea that understanding brain circuits can guide the next breakthroughs in machine learning.

Q: What has been your favorite part about developing this concentration during your time at Brown? 

My independent concentration allowed me to challenge myself with graduate-level deep learning courses, diving into everything from the theoretical foundations of algorithms to the diverse applications in genomics, health care and beyond. In parallel to my computational work, I had several opportunities to work in the anatomy lab at the Warren Alpert Medical School alongside my peers, diving into brain dissections, learning about heart valves and major vessels, and exploring lungs, kidneys and musculoskeletal structures.

Every pillar of this concentration has been unforgettable. Crafting my honors thesis on brain-aligned deep neural networks in the Serre Lab was a highlight: designing a large-scale human-in-the-loop experiment, collecting millions of image annotations from thousands of study participants, and then seeing our harmonized computer vision models align with humans.

Q: How will your concentration help shape your career path? 

As I matriculate to the Warren Alpert Medical School, I will bring together clinical training and entrepreneurship. Through my startup, Kyron Medical, I’ll continue to develop AI systems that streamline medical workflows, leveraging what I learned to build models that are both transparent and clinically robust. Simultaneously, I’ll pursue collaborative research with teams at Brown and other institutions, developing solutions to major medical challenges. My goal is to create machine learning tools that improve patient care by helping doctors do what they love. My education at Brown will help me advocate for responsible AI adoption in health care, ensuring that assistive tools enhance clinical workflows while strengthening doctor-patient relationships.