Jake Lang is a member of the Class of 2025 in the School of Foreign Service majoring in Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA). While working at his local pharmacy during the pandemic, Jake found a passion for interrogating how commercial actors and their profit motivations often drive health inequity. As a MURF, Jake continues exploring the commercial determinants of health, largely through research with his faculty mentor, Dr. Emily Mendenhall—a medical anthropologist, professor of global health, and leading expert on syndemic methods— on the politics of the US opioid crisis—one of this decade’s most pressing public health challenges. After a year of analyzing public health research and a brief stint conducting ethnographic place-setting in a West Virginia mining community, Jake published a scoping review-with Professor Mendenhall and Dr. Adam Koon of Johns Hopkins University on opioid-related overdose syndemics in the International Journal of Drug Policy. Seeking to supplement this research experience with opportunities in the policy world, Jake served as a Public Health Intern in the White House Office of National Drug Control Strategy (ONDCP) during the Fall 2023 semester. At ONDCP, Jake supported experts shaping federal policy on substance use prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery services. Today, Jake’s research projects include tracing how the opioid industry shaped academic and popular discourses on pain as well as mapping the emerging psychedelic sector’s commercial determinants. Outside of his research, Jake serves the Georgetown community as a Resident Assistant in Arrupe Hall and as General Manager of The Midnight Mug, the student-run coffee shop in Lauinger Library.