It has not taken long for 27-year-old Brian Powers to make his voice known in the medical field. As a rising fourth-year student in Harvard’s joint MD-MBA program, Powers has published 20 academic articles, many in some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.

“[Harvard Medical School] faculty say that Powers has already made a real impact on America’s healthcare system,” notes a recent Harvard Magazine article. “His research and writing focus on a wide range of topics, including health care reform, high-value care, physician leadership, medical education, and race and medicine.” The magazine adds that in comparison a typical publishing rate of Harvard medical students is one or two articles.

Powers, a history major at Bowdoin, wrote his senior thesis on black physicians who practiced before the Civil War; a modified version of this paper was published in the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. One of Powers’ Harvard instructors observed that Powers is a mature author who approaches writing as a craft and skillfully translates complex ideas into accessible, balanced and nuanced prose. Powers is also deputy editor of Health Care: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation

After graduating from Bowdoin in 2010, the same year the Affordable Care Act was passed, Powers took a job at the Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit in Washington D.C. He told Harvard Magazine that his two years with the organization gave him broad exposure to the challenges facing the U.S. healthcare system, and the most promising opportunities for improvement.