Introductions and What to Expect
This post will include when I started writing, why I started writing, what I’m currently working on, and what you should expect to see going forwards, including subscriber benefits, ending with some of my hobbies and where you can find me outside of SubStack.
The Chronology of my Writing
I started writing early, around the end of elementary school, however I truly became interested in writing at the beginning of middle school; I had a poem published in elementary school, but I did that on a whim and was not proud of the work at the time.
I started writing because I enjoyed reading fiction and novels, notably that of detectives and Sci-fi; most of the times the plot I wrote would not make any sense and were a disorganized mess of Aliens being detectives of humanity, or the other way around. As I was good with computers, and started to program, I became interested in ICT classes, which led me to become the president of the STEAM club at my middle school and take certification courses on the topics I learned. Then, I asked my father on what to use my newfound skills and was referred to my current research mentor to conduct simple analysis using Excel. My first project was on whether there is discrimination amongst the elderly and disabled in FDA oncology drug trials; I conducted a bibliographic search on the different versions of oncology drugs approved by the FDA from 2014-2021 (my Senior year of high school), and for what cancers the drugs were developed for with the aim of finding out the demographical information. However, I became busy with graduation and getting ready for college, so the project went on an indefinite hiatus.
Around this time, I had just finished a course on R, and was improving my data analysis skills in Excel; I approached my research mentor on if there were any ongoing projects in need of data analysis. Luckily, there was a project that I could work on, and it led to my first publication, which can be found here, which was published during the same year.
The Current Era:
As a freshman at USF, I started looking for new opportunities in research that would align with my professional goal of trying to understand the way people think but thought that was to lofty of an ambition for a singular person at the time. I was diagnosed with moderate hearing loss in my junior year of high school, and started wearing hearing aids and felt that information was lackluster, or generally lacking. For example, I grew up in rural Wisconsin, where I was always at the borderline of hearing loss and was misdiagnosed with ADHD; I turned 16 that year, and could no longer get tested at my pediatrician, I got a proper hearing assessment done, and was recognized with moderate hearing loss in lower frequencies in Florida.
This led me to start research in the field of hearing loss and joined the Global Center for Speech and Hearing on campus as a sophomore, where I am still conducting data analysis on tinnitus and its influences in mice’s hearing; I am still working here and started teaching R and Tableau with the Research Assistant (RA) Coordinator to other RA’s.
Using this experience, and my interest in hearing research, I approached my second research mentor last year, whom I met by working with him on my first paper to conduct individual research on whether elementary school hearing tests are leading to increased hearing aid adoption. I chose this group as the benefit for hearing aids increases with the increasing student to teacher ratio in middle school, and growing class sizes. However, the testing stopped in elementary school, and state legislation is inconsistent on whether hearing checks should be conducted at all; additionally, initial literature review showed they focused on high frequency hearing loss. If you remember, earlier on I stated I have hearing loss in low frequencies, and was not recommended hearing aids during routine testing, which was the main inspiration for participating in hearing research; currently this paper is in its conceptualization phase.
However, academically this is not the only field I’m interested in; I am an Information Science (IS) major and became fascinated with information seeking and its models. One assignment last month had us loosely develop an information seeking model; I sought to have a fully fleshed out model and started developing one that I hoped would remedy the problems I had with existing IS models. I am currently working on the manuscript, but here is the image of the model; I plan to make a post on it once the manuscript is completed.
Zuhair's Helmet Information-Seeking Model
What to Expect in the Future:
As previously mentioned, I have several academic writings in the process; however, I started this SubStack to be a less formal place to write about my hobbies and my independent research. As such, this section is more of a personal section on who I am, and what I would like to write about.
Firstly, my name is Zuhair Niazi, and I am currently a junior at USF, majoring in IS with a concentration in health informatics. Outside of academics, some of my hobbies are tech, modifying knives, music, manga/anime, and skateboarding; all of which I would be interested in writing about in no particular order.
I plan on having one piece of paid content per month after three months from the publication of this post; at first all content will be unpaid. This paid content will include my research and academic interests, while the free content will be that of my hobbies; I have set the price to the lowest amount that SubStack allowed me at creation. However, I appreciate anyone who decides to join during this free period.
Outside of SubStack, you can find me on Instagram @captainzazu123 and Zuhair Niazi on LinkedIn
