I knew I wanted to heal people, but I also knew that biological sciences alone would not allow me to do so satisfactorily.

At the age of 26, Jason Vassy has already led an astonishingly diverse career in health. He has volunteered at clinics in Missouri and South Carolina; helped run free clinics (in Spanish) in Nicaragua; learned about socialized medicine by working at a French hospital; screened kids for lead poisoning at schools and grocery stores in St. Louis; and conducted research in pediatric oncology at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Morocco.

Now he's come to the Bloomberg School in Baltimore to learn how to apply the science he learned in medical school to the specific cultural limitations of developing nations. "I hope to prevent the medical complications of chronic diseases like diabetes by addressing the lifestyle choices that predispose to them, both in the U.S. and abroad," he says.