Student Profiles

Aaron Bernstein is passionate about oncology research. Throughout his undergraduate study at The Pennsylvania State University, he made a point of exploring the full spectrum of biomedical research, from basic gene regulation work to clinical studies of chemotherapeutic toxicity. While Aaron began in wet-bench molecular biology research, intending to work as close to the fundamental mechanisms of cancer as possible, he ultimately found that he preferred the more computational approaches of bioinformatics and biostatistics.

Aaron earned an MPhil in Epidemiology at University of Cambridge.  Under the supervision of Dr. Paul Pharoah and Dr. Serena Nik-Zainal, he completed a bioinformatics thesis on the association between germline risk-conferring variants and somatic mutational signatures in breast cancer. As both an NIH OxCam Scholar and a Gates Cambridge Scholar, Aaron will pursue PhD research on the development of machine learning-driven algorithms for identification and evaluation of breast cancer histology slides, under the supervision of Dr. Pharoah, as well as Dr. Montserrat Garcia-Closas and Dr. Jonas Almeida at the NCI.

Aaron’s ultimate goal is to become a physician-scientist with a specialty in oncology and a research focus on the application of machine-learning to patient genetics and histology. A PhD through the NIH OxCam program will aid Aaron in forming collaborations with international leaders in these topics, promoting the integration of his research directly into the clinic and helping inform patient treatment globally.

Abigail graduated from Binghamton University in May 2017 with Presidential Honors for academic excellence as a Binghamton University Scholar and a BS in Cellular and Molecular Biology. As an undergraduate, Abigail investigated the genetic basis of environment toxicant susceptibility in Drosophila melanogaster under the supervision of Dr. Anthony Fiumera with the support of an Undergraduate Research Award. At the conclusion of her junior year, she was selected to participate in the Biomedical Research Apprenticeship Program at Washington University in St. Louis where she characterized glycolytic substrate metabolism and serine biosynthesis in several Osteosarcomas under the supervision of Dr. Brian Van Tine. Here, she developed an interest in cellular metabolism, metabolic remodeling, and bioenergetics. Hoping to expand her background in these areas, Abigail was selected for an Intramural Research Training Award Postbaccalaureate Fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in June 2017. She joined the Lab of Cardiac Energetics where she investigated mitochondrial metabolism in the heart under the supervision of Dr. Robert Balaban. During this time, Abigail helped develop a novel method of transmural absorbance spectroscopy and differential, spectral analysis which enables investigators to monitor mitochondrial energetics at the molecular scale in an intact tissue. Abigail also employed these methodology to evaluate the effects of nitric oxide, a diverse signaling molecule, on mitochondria redox status and cardiac function. She will continue investigating mitochondrial function in cardiac physiology and pathophysiology as an NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholar under the supervision of Dr. Robert Balaban (NHLBI) and Dr. Mike Murphy (Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge).

Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, Aditi attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. There, she majored in chemistry and minored in math. During her undergraduate studies, she joined the lab of Dr. Jessica Sarver, studying the differential lipid binding properties of alpha synuclein, the basis of Lewy bodies in Parkinson’s disease.

After graduating from Swarthmore in 2017, she joined the lab of Dr. Sandra Maday at the University of Pennsylvania. She studied the regulation of autophagy in neurons and astrocytes, showing that astrocytes are able to more robustly activate autophagy compared to neurons. These findings raised new questions about intercellular coordination within the brain to maintain homeostasis and resulted in a first- author publication in the journal Autophagy.

Aditi entered the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2020, where she joined the lab of Dr. Andrew Venteicher, a neurosurgeon MD PhD. There, she studied the molecular subgroups of the developing notochord in relation to chordoma, a rare skull-based cancer thought to originate from notochord remnant. Along with the exposure to new techniques, this experience helped Aditi to solidify her goal of becoming a physician-scientist. After completing her first two years of medical school, Aditi joined the NIH OxCam program for her PhD. She is mentored by Dr. Zuhang Sheng (NINDS) and Dr. Andras Lakatos (Cambridge).

After completing her PhD, Aditi will complete her MD at the University of Minnesota. Outside of the lab, Aditi enjoys attempting new recipes, running, and knitting.

Growing up in West Virginia, Alaina witnessed how sociodemographic barriers and lifestyle factors contribute to elevated rates of cancer and chronic disease risk factors. These experiences informed her education at the College of William & Mary, where she majored in Neuroscience and Interdisciplinary Public Health. Through the Amgen Scholars Program, Alaina was introduced to professional public health research and studied the epidemiology of genetic disorders at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her evolving interest in big data and health disparities led her to conduct a senior undergraduate honors thesis exploring the life course epidemiology of sickle cell disease and the detrimental impact of historically racist health policies.

After William and Mary, Alaina became a postbaccalaureate fellow at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Under the supervision of Dr. Robert Hoover, her research predominantly focused on reproductive cancers. Additionally, Alaina obtained experience in study management by assisting senior principal investigators with building a new prospective cohort, Connect for Cancer Prevention.

Alaina then completed a Master of Science in Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she studied modifiable health behaviors among cancer survivors. As a graduate research assistant with Dr. Lorelei Mucci and Dr. Kathryn Penney, she researched prostate cancer survivors' quality of life outcomes in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Her thesis examined sleep disturbances among prostate cancer survivors.

As an NIH Oxford Scholar, Alaina will investigate what types of physical activity are associated with lower cancer incidence. She will use machine learning methods to quantify accelerometer-measured activity for cancer risk models with U.K. Biobank data. She will also implement two-sample Mendelian Randomization methods to explore potential causal effects between physical activity and cancer. Alaina hopes this research will inform population-level physical activity guidelines, decreasing the incidence of cancer outcomes and chronic disease risk factors.

Alex Waldman graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May 2016 where he earned comprehensive honors degrees in both Neurobiology and Spanish, while simultaneously earning certificates in Global Health, European Studies, and Stem Cell Sciences. At the university, he immersed himself in a wide variety of extracurricular activities. As a member of the Biology Core Curriculum Outreach Ambassadors, Alex coordinated monthly bedside science outreach events at American Family Children's Hospital for patients employing the process of inquiry-based learning. Alex also studied abroad in Toledo, Spain where he participated in an immersion internship at the Hospital Nacional de Parapléjicos and learned artistic rehabilitation techniques. As a scientist in the Peter Ferrazzano laboratory, Alex investigated the age-dependent contribution of microglial neuroinflammation to the pathology of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. His contributions were published in the Journal of Neuroimmunology following presentation at the Society for Neuroscience. Alex was also awarded a summer stem cell fellowship to work in Qiang Chang’s laboratory and investigate the pathophysiology of Rett Syndrome. His contributions were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

During his preclinical training at Emory University School of Medicine, Alex was president of the Medical Spanish Interest Group where he helped organize the annual Hispanic Health Fair in Gwinnett County. In addition, he received grants from the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers and the Radiological Society of North America to stay connected to research and investigate the sexually dimorphic nature of multiple sclerosis utilizing biochemical and radiological approaches. 

As an NIH-Oxford Scholar, Alex will be mentored by Michael Lenardo and Gabriele De Luca. His project will investigate the genetic underpinnings of multiple sclerosis to better understand heterogeneity in pathogenesis and response to treatment. 

Alia graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics. She worked in the lab of Dr. Amy Rowat investigating the molecular underpinnings of pancreatic cancer cell deformability and stiffness. After graduation, Alia worked as a research technician in the lab of Dr. Clifford Lowell at the University of California San Francisco, where she studied regulators of innate immune signaling and assessed their potential as immunotherapy targets. She is currently attending medical school at the University of Illinois Chicago and is part of their Medical Scientist Training Program. Alia will now be working with Dr. Stefan Muljo at NIAID and Dr. Anindita Roy at Oxford to investigate mechanisms underlying the transition from fetal to postnatal hematopoiesis and their role in the development of hematological diseases.

Amelia’s interest in research was sparked at Princeton University, where she pursued a B.A. in molecular biology. Her studies culminated in her thesis project in the lab of Professor Elizabeth Gavis, during which she investigated translational regulation and RNA splicing events in Drosophila models. After graduating from her bachelors in 2016, Amelia was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research on chronic kidney disease at the Semmelweis Medical University in Hungary. Continuing her education, Amelia participated in an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree under full scholarship, which enabled her to study at a consortium of prestigious European universities, namely Heidelberg University and Uppsala University. In this International Master in Innovative Medicine (IMIM), she embarked on her study of cancers. Having investigated melanoma metastases in Heidelberg and glioblastoma at Uppsala, Amelia was inspired to continue cancer research into her PhD. As an NIH-OxCam scholar, Amelia will be investigating chromatin remodeling and the modulation of the tumor microenvironment in adult and childhood brain cancers.

Anagha graduated with Highest Honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Stamps President's Scholar in May 2019. As an undergraduate supervised by Dr. Krishnendu Roy, she developed three-dimensional microfluidic models to study the interactions between fibroblasts and stromal cells during lymphatic vasculature formation. She has also worked on projects at the University of North Texas and the University of Texas at Dallas; she developed phononic crystals for improved ultrasound imaging and ran a computational analysis of migraine drug targets, respectively. Her research has been recognized by several awards, including the MARS Generation 24 Under 24 Award, the Alfred H. Gibeling Research Award, and the Goldwater Scholarship (which she received as a high school senior at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science). Following graduation, Anagha worked at Glympse Bio, where she assisted with assay development and animal testing for active protease sensors that noninvasively monitored patient response to immunotherapy.

In addition to her research interests, Anagha is extremely passionate about STEM education and outreach; as an undergraduate, she co-founded an organization that used computer science education to improve young womens’ self-efficacy. To further her interests in education, Anagha was awarded a Fulbright Grant in 2019 and served as a visiting lecturer at Uva Wellassa University in Sri Lanka.

For her thesis work, Anagha will be studying how intratumor heterogeneity affects immune response in a variety of cancers. She intends to attend medical school after the completion of her doctorate.

As an undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley, Asmaysinh studied molecular biology with an emphasis in immunology. In addition to his coursework, he developed microfluidic interfaces for silicon photonic biosensors under the supervision of Professor Vladimir Stojanvoic in the department of electrical engineering and computer science. In particular, Asmaysinh engineered multilayer microfluidic packaging to overcome the unique challenges of interfacing with small footprint integrated circuit devices while allowing for photonic access. Upon graduating in 2018, Asmaysinh gained additional experience as a research and development engineer in the lab of Professor Mekhail Anwar at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in the department of radiation oncology. Here he played diverse roles in microfabrication, bioconjugation chemistry, cell culture, and software development in a continued collaboration with electrical engineering groups at Berkeley with the ultimate goal of creating implantable diagnostic sensors for highly personalized cancer therapy.

In his graduate studies, Asmaysinh hopes to leverage advances in microelectronics and immunology to develop a platform to generate cellular therapies. He strives to commercialize such high efficiency platforms to reduce the cost of personalized immunotherapies and ensure their universal accessibility.

Ayden became fascinated with the immune system during his undergraduate studies at Duke University, particularly with respect to its therapeutic applications for complex diseases. He pursued this interest through his translational glioblastoma research, studying engineered cytotoxic T cells alongside the cancer’s immune microenvironment. In this midst of this research, Ayden also began to question the accessibility of scientific advancements, especially in the context of clinical medicine. Accordingly, he investigated the barriers to care and adverse health outcomes faced by Native Americans in North Carolina. Through the NIH OxCam program and Gates Cambridge scholarship, Ayden will continue this work under the supervision of Prof. Ziad Mallat and Dr. Claudia Kemper, where he will study the cellular immunology underlying atherosclerosis and other types of chronic inflammation. Given the disparate impact of heart disease on racial and ethnic minority groups within both the US and UK, such advancements are poised to have a significant social impact. Following his studies at Cambridge, Ayden intends to pursue medical education in the US. Through his research, Ayden hopes to develop immunologic treatments for cardiovascular pathologies, alleviating the burden of heart disease on individuals and their communities.

Benjamin graduated from Harvard University with a degree in computer science in 2020. As an undergraduate, he focused extensively on research, with topics ranging from robotic chemical synthesis to nutritional science to biological defense. Beginning his sophomore year, Benjamin worked with collaborators at Indiana University and MIT to develop a robotic system capable of synthesizing peptides and peptoids. He continued this research as an undergraduate research fellow in the lab of George Church at Harvard Medical School during his junior year and remains the lead software developer of the project. Additionally, Benjamin developed software for the optimization of daily meal plans. For this work, he was given the Emerging Leader in Nutrition award by the American Society for Nutrition at their national convention.

Since his sophomore year, Benjamin has worked at Lab41, the machine learning research lab of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the US Intelligence Community. There, he has focused on developing bioinformatic methods for determining the origin of outbreaks of infectious disease as well as identifying and attributing deliberate genetic engineering in pathogens from sequencing data. At In-Q-Tel, he has published four papers, all as first or sole author, and presented at several international conferences.

As an NIH Oxford scholar, Benjamin will be joining the labs of Dr. Eugene Koonin at NCBI and Prof. Peter Simmonds at Oxford. He intends to focus on metagnomics-based pathogen discovery and comparative genomics. Outside of academia, he enjoys contributing to open-source software development, listening to audiobooks, and experimenting with cooking.

Benjamin Simon graduated with Distinction from Duke University in May 2023, earning a dual degree in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science, and a minor in Global Health. His passion for health equity led him to pursue research under the mentorship of Dr. Nimmi Ramanujam at Duke’s Center for Global Women’s Health Technology. As an undergraduate researcher, he designed a machine learning and analysis pipeline to segment and analyze vascular features of mammary tissue in a mouse model. This project paved the way for his excitement for algorithmic design and the potential for such technologies based in machine learning to increase access, accuracy, and efficiency of certain medical decisions and analyses.

Benjamin has also worked on various other projects at Duke University for which his work has been recognized by multiple awards, including four consecutive Undergraduate Assistantship Grants awarded by Duke University, a Student Marshal title, and a Rhodes Scholarship Nomination. In addition he received the UCLA Research Excellence Award for his fellowship project on disease progression of complex mental health disorders using natural language processing of Electronic Health Record notes and latent dirichlet allocation under the guidance of Dr. Loes Olde Loohuis and Juan de la Hoz.
 

Outside of research, Benjamin is passionate about teaching and education. He taught multiple courses as a teaching assistant during his time at Duke in the Biology, Computer Science, and Global Health departments through which he came to love teaching and mentoring his students. Looking ahead, through the NIH OxCam program Benjamin will work with Dr. Ismail Baris Turkbey at the NCI and Dr. David Clifton at Oxford with a focus on building diagnostic machine learning algorithms for cancer risk prediction. He intends to develop tools and methodologies that address bias and inequity in algorithmic medical decisions. Additionally, he remains committed to furthering his training in education and teaching.

Benjamin is also an out-and-proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, passionate about being outspoken in the scientific community and uplifting LGBTQ+ and other marginalized voices.

Boya graduated with high honors from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a degree in Chemistry. While there, she conducted microbiology research with Dr. Matthew Wolfgang. She studied a Pseudomonas aeurginosa motility system that allows the bacteria to colonize patients with cystic fibrosis. This work was published in Journal of Biological Chemistry. Throughout undergraduate, Boya also led a nonprofit organization to establish a medical lab in Lawra, Ghana. After graduation, Boya worked in the lab of Dr. Camille Ehre at UNC. She used primary human epithelial cell models to investigate new compounds which break down mucus in patients with obstructive lung disease. This work was published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. In total, Boya’s research experience motivated her to address questions with clinical relevance and learn bioinformatic skills applicable to a range of topics.

Subsequently, Boya completed two years of medical school at UNC. Her current research interest is in the translational application of cancer genomics. She will analyze circulating tumor DNA to monitor treatment response and tumor evolution. Outside of research, Boya enjoys running, traveling, and baking desserts for any occasion. Ultimately, Boya is thrilled to continue the journey of becoming physician scientist as a NIH Cambridge Scholar.

During his undergraduate career at UC Berkeley, Byron studied cataractogenesis and supported the development of gelatin microbead templated chambers in hydrogel as a platform to engineer lens organoids. The latter project inspired a fascination for biomimetic designs and their applications in modeling biological systems and in therapeutic development. At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, he continued this area of research but with a focus on its connection to clinical therapies. He evaluated genipin cross-linked fibrin as an injectable, cell- and compound-delivering biomaterial to repair the intervertebral disc after herniation as a member of Dr. James Iatridis’s Spine Bioengineering Lab. He then joined the Medical Research Scholars Program under the supervision of Dr. Pamela G. Robey to explore human bone marrow stromal cells embedded in fibrin microbeads as a repair strategy for focal articular cartilage defects in animal models. These collective experiences have cultivated Byron’s passion for stem cell biology, and as a future MD/PhD, aspires to apply his research background to the development of regenerative therapies. 

Moving forward, Byron will study the biomechanical and chemical signaling pathways involved in skeletal modeling with the goal of developing novel treatment modalities for bone fractures. As a solar-powered individual, Byron plans to spend his free time biking and playing tennis. Additionally, in caring deeply about environmental sustainability, he aims to participate in organizations that support local farms and communities through green practices like composting.

I was born and raised in Chihuahua, Mexico before moving to the US as a freshman in high school. It was my love for the sciences that allowed me to overcome inherent cultural barriers and connect with others. I graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017 with a B.S. in Biological Engineering. As an undergraduate, I joined Dr. Robert Langer’s lab and worked on the development of novel biodegradable scaffolds for tissue engineering. In addition, I designed microfluidic devices for both nanoparticle synthesis and tissue culture through two internships. My interest in medicine and clinical research was solidified after spending a summer investigating influenza in immunocompromised patients in the lab of Dr. Richard Webby at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

After graduating from MIT, I joined Dr. Sarah Tasian’s group at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) where I collaborated in multi-institutional precision medicine studies and investigated the use of novel targeted therapies. My work at CHOP opened my eyes to a career as a physician-scientist in hematology/oncology. Thereafter, I began my medical training at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Supported by the American Society of Hematology, I worked with Dr. Christopher Dvorak at the University of California, San Francisco investigating curative options in hematology. I then joined the NIH-Medical Research Scholars Program to expand my skills as a scientist and understand the mechanisms behind different targeted therapies. As part of Dr. Rosandra Kaplan’s lab, I have been characterizing the role of myeloid cells in solid tumor progression and metastasis.

Under the supervision of Dr. Rosandra Kaplan at the NCI and Prof. Francesca Buffa at Oxford, I will be continuing this work as an NIH-OxCam Scholar. My goal is to further our understanding of tumor immunology to identify new therapeutic targets in pediatric cancers.

Dalton graduated with distinction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017 with a degree in Molecular Biology and a certificate in Stem Cell Sciences. During undergraduate at Madison, Dalton worked for four years in the lab of Dr. Bikash Pattnaik where he helped develop a disease model of Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis using induced pluripotent stem cells derived from a patient born with the disorder. Dalton spent his undergraduate summers performing research as part of the Pediatric Oncology Education Program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. He worked with Dr. Richard Webby and Dr. Paul Thomas, studying adaptive and innate immune responses to influenza virus infection.

After graduating from university in 2017, Dalton joined the lab of Dr. Warren Leonard in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute as a postbaccalaureate IRTA fellow. In Dr. Leonard’s lab, Dalton studied the ability of immune signaling molecules called cytokines to induce disparate metabolic states in CD8+ T cells and described how those metabolic alterations contribute to anti-tumor immunity. This work was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.

Dalton entered the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2019 and completed two years of medical training before joining the Oxford/Cambridge Scholars program for his PhD. As an NIH-Cambridge scholar, Dalton is mentored by Dr. Robert Seder (NIAID) and John Marioni (Cambridge). His project focuses on the characterization of CD8+ T cells following vaccination with a novel cancer vaccine developed in the Seder lab.

After the completion of his MD and PhD degrees, Dalton aspires to train as a Pediatric Oncologist and work as a physician scientist at an academic medical center.

Daniel graduated from Brown University with an A.B./Sc.B in Economics and Neuroscience.  While at Brown, he was a member of the varsity baseball team and researched the formation of Martian gullies in the Planetary Geosciences Group.  During a leave of absence from Brown, Daniel founded and was Executive Director of a 501c3 non-profit, TRB Baseball, which provided sports, training, college advising, and educational opportunities for inner-city youth in Durham, North Carolina.  Since graduation, he has been an NIH Post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award Fellow in the Section on Clinical Genomics and Experimental Therapeutics (CGET) at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), where his research has focused on leveraging population genetics to examine the causes and consequences of alcohol abuse and alcohol use disorder. 

His research at the NIAAA has resulted in seven co-authored publications and six first-author publications.   Daniel has also had the opportunity to present his work at conferences in the United Kingdom (Mendelian Randomization Conference, University of Bristol), and at the World Psychiatric Genomics Conference (Anaheim, California). As an NIH-OxCam Scholar, Daniel will use multi-omic and genetic approaches to examine how epigenetic and environmental risk factors impact disease risk. 

David is a DMD-DPhil student pursuing his dental degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Dentistry and DPhil at the University of Oxford.  He joined UAB’s Early Dental School Acceptance Program (EDSAP) as a first-year undergraduate student in 2011 and graduated Summa Cum Laude from UAB’s EDSAP, University Honors, and Biomedical Engineering Programs with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering in 2015.  Throughout his undergraduate and professional education, he trained in the Biomedical Engineering lab of Dr. Ho-Wook Jun developing novel bionanomatrix materials and partook in multiple clinical research trials.  With exposure to prominent clinical research teams caring for individuals with craniofacial diseases and disorders, three years of dental education further solidified his aim for an academic career investigating molecular mechanisms of craniofacial embryogenesis and development.

Intent on characterizing mechanisms driving these processes from a basic biology perspective, in 2018 he joined the lab of Dr. Kenneth Yamada in the NIDCR as an NIH Medical Research Scholars Program fellow.  In the Yamada lab, he analyzed basic cell signaling mechanisms and sought means of continuing to learn from some of the most notable scientists of the era.  These efforts brought him to his current position in the NIH-OxCam program as a student of Dr. Kenneth Yamada and Professor Alex Bullock investigating the functional and structural characteristics of proteins implicated in development and disease.  Upon completing the NIH-OxCam program, David will build on this basic science foundation through continued research and clinical training.  His goal is an academic career leading a team of clinicians and scientists who design and develop novel biomaterials that can regulate cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions in clinical therapeutic applications.

Dawid was born in Bialystok, Poland and moved to Chicago, USA at a young age. Dawid began his research at Loyola University studying antibody engineering against Ebola as part of a joint project with the United States Army. Near the start of his junior year of college, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic began, and he transitioned to Harvard university to join the effort in designing a COVID-19 vaccine. Dawid is currently studying protein engineering methods to create rationally designed vaccines.

Emily’s interest in science started in high school through a research experience at the Illinois Institute of Technology where she studied blood flow dynamics in patients with renal disease. Her project was awarded a semifinalist prize in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology. Motivated by her high school work, she pursued several international science programs, including summer research at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the Dr. Bessie F. Lawrence Summer Science Institute at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Together, these experiences sparked a lasting interest in using research to understand complex biomedical questions.

Emily graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.S. in Biological Sciences, specializing in immunology. As an undergrad, she worked in Cathy Nagler’s translational immunology lab studying the relationship between gut bacteria and food allergies and completed an honors thesis investigating the ability of high fiber diets to expand populations of barrier-strengthening gut bacteria that can prevent the development of food allergies. Her thesis work uncovered a specific fiber structure that was preferentially utilized by the microbiota to improve gut health, which has since been further developed for therapeutic use by a company started through the lab. Emily also took advanced graduate immunology and microbiology coursework. She became fascinated with the immune system and its immense power to maintain human health but also create havoc in disease.

After college, Emily did full-time research at the Rockefeller University in New York City. She worked in Jan Breslow’s metabolism and biochemistry lab studying immune chemotaxis-inducing peptides generated by activation of enzymes in the contact system, an enzyme cascade associated with blood coagulation and inflammation. She elucidated the signaling mechanism of the peptide and therapeutically targeted the pathway in various murine models of immune-mediated diseases. She presented her work at multiple national meetings and was directly involved in developing a clinically relevant, novel small molecular inhibitor for the enzyme of interest. 

Inspired by the powerful intersection of medicine and science, Emily applied to medical school, and she completed her preclinical years at Rush Medical College in Chicago. During this time, she was a student ambassador and member of the student curriculum committee. Upon joining the NIH Ox-Cam program, she will build on her previous research background and interest in immunology and study how immune crosstalk between the gut and brain is regulated by immunometabolic pathways. In the future, she hopes to pursue a career as a physician-scientist combining clinical work, translational immunology-focused research, and innovative therapeutic development.  Outside of the lab, she enjoys running, swimming, baking, and trying new restaurants.    

Emily graduated with high distinction from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign with a B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology. While there, she worked in the lab of Dr. Marni Boppart,  investigating the 7 integrin as a therapeutic target in the prevention of age-related maladaptive changes observed in skeletal muscle tissue. The findings of this research culminated in the completion of her undergraduate thesis. After graduation, Emily worked as an NIH Postbaccalaureate Fellow in Dr. Christine Alewine’s and Dr. Ira Pastan’s labs in the National Cancer Institute, studying the use of recombinant immunotoxin therapeutics to treat cancer. An area of focus during this time was elucidating the mechanism of the synergistic activity of a mesothelin targeted immunotoxin with taxanes in pancreatic cancer. She has since started her MD-PhD degree at the Medical College of Wisconsin. As a physician scientist, Emily hopes to translate new cancer therapeutics to the clinic.

Francisco Battiti, grew up in Honduras and moved to the USA shortly before beginning college. Francisco is immensely passionate about organic chemistry, where scientific determination and artistic spirit clash to form that he believes to be the most creative of all the sciences. 

Grace’s research interests began in Professor Erin Bromage’s laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. As a comparative immunology laboratory, she studied the adaptive immune response in rainbow trout to vaccination, with the goal to improve animal vaccinations for the aquaculture industry. Here, she also contributed to a case study involving the use of bacteriophage therapy for a loggerhead turtle suffering from a persistent bacterial infection as an alternative to antibiotics.

After her graduation in 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in biology, she desired to integrate into oncology research. To achieve this, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Alex Toker at Harvard Medical School, where their research centers around PI3K/Akt cellular signaling and its implications in cellular metabolism in breast cancer. Some of her contributions to the laboratory include aiding in a genome wide CRISPR screen to gain mechanistic insights of pathway crosstalk with PI3K/Akt signaling in ovarian cancer, exploring hits from another genome wide CRISPR screen in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) with hopes to identify druggable genetic targets that work in synergy with PI3K/Akt inhibitors, and characterizing pTyr sites on metabolic enzymes that are important in TNBC. She has also worked in collaboration with the Dibble laboratory at Harvard Medical School, where she made significant contributions to their work identifying PANK4 as a novel Akt substrate that regulates CoA synthesis from vitamin B5.

As a NIH-Cambridge PhD scholar, she will continue her work in cancer biology. With the mentorship of Professor Marc de la Roche from the University of Cambridge and Dr. John Hammer from the NHLBI, she will explore adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) deregulation in colorectal cancer utilizing organoid models and the implications this deregulation in cytoskeletal rearrangement and motor proteins. Grace has a long-term goal of a career in academia and looks forward to getting involved with science policy in graduate school and after graduation.

Gretchen graduated summa cum laude from Macalester College in 2017 with a major in Neuroscience. She first participated in research as an undergraduate summer intern in the lab of Dr. Robert Thorne at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Thorne lab studied the mechanisms and pathways involved with the delivery of biologics into the central nervous system (CNS) centered on antibody-based therapeutics targeting neurological disorders. Gretchen spent two summers studying Fc receptor distribution within the CNS and brain vasculature focusing on how these receptors impacted the delivery of IgG-based immunotherapies.

After graduating from Macalester, Gretchen received a Fulbright grant to conduct 12 months of research at the University of Bern in the lab of Dr. Britta Engelhardt, studying neuroinflammation and immune cell migration. Specifically, her project focused on immune cell migration into the central nervous system during experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, an animal model of multiple sclerosis.

Gretchen then continued neuroscience research as an NIH postbaccalaureate fellow. She evaluated the effect of age on the ability of transplanted neural precursor cells to integrate and form bidirectional connections with the host brain. The CNS generally cannot regenerate damaged neurons following injury or disease, and the ability of transplanted neural stem cells to form an integrated neuronal tissue with bidirectional connectivity may have implications for CNS regenerative medicine.

In 2021, Gretchen entered the MSTP at Northwestern University. She completed two years of medical school before starting her PhD in the NIH OxCam Scholars program. As an Oxford scholar, Gretchen plans to further study neural stem cell transplantation with a focus on elucidating the mechanisms by which the adult rodent brain innervates transplant-derived neuronal tissue under the mentorship of Zoltan Molnar and Francis Szele at the University of Oxford and Alan Koretsky in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Hallie’s introduction to the world of scientific research began at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in her hometown of Batavia, Illinois. As a high school student, she worked for the Dark Energy Survey identifying strong gravitational lensing candidates in images taken by the Dark Energy Camera through visual and computer analysis. This extraordinary experience sparked her interest in pursuing a career in science. Hallie attended Yale College, graduating in 2019 with a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology with Distinction in the Major. During her undergraduate years, she worked as a research assistant in the lab of Dr. Amy Arnsten at the Yale School of Medicine, where she investigated pharmacologic interventions to treat negative symptoms of schizophrenia using rat models. In the summer of 2016, she was selected to participate in a Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of Chicago Conte Center for Computational Neuropsychiatric Genomics where she used computer modeling to uncover hidden genetic and environmental correlations between traditionally distinct disease phenotypes. In the summer of 2017, she won a Thouron Scholarship to study in the Pembroke-King’s Programme at the University of Cambridge, during which time she completed a research supervision with Prof. Raymond Bujdoso focusing on the pathogenesis of proteinopathies and prion-related diseases. Her senior thesis at Yale was the culmination of three years of work in the lab of Dr. Erol Fikrig at the Yale School of Medicine investigating the role of the A. aegypti mosquito vector in Zika virus transmission, infection, and pathogenesis. 

Hallie joined the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine MSTP in 2019 and has since completed her first two years of medical school. In 2021, she was awarded a Gates-Cambridge Scholarship. As an NIH Gates Cambridge Scholar, Hallie will be undertaking a Ph.D. in Clinical Neurosciences. She aims to draw upon her experiences in wet lab and computational research to complete an interdisciplinary, co-mentored research project in the field of neuroimmunology and, specifically, multiple sclerosis (MS). MS affects millions of people worldwide and often has debilitating outcomes ranging from disrupted sensation and loss of ambulation to cognitive dysfunction and psychiatric problems. Hallie’s project will focus on identifying molecular biomarkers for remyelination using methylation patterns in cell-free DNA released from glial progenitor cells. Hallie hopes that her work will contribute to a greater understanding of this complex disease and provide the ability to quantify the level of myelin regeneration in the brain and spinal cord during clinical trials of remyelinating therapies.

As a future physician-scientist, Hallie aims to devote her career to investigating the processes that govern disease etiology and pathogenesis and applying this knowledge to patient care. After completion of her doctoral training, she plans to finish medical school and then apply to research-focused residency programs in either neurology or neurosurgery. Her goal is to work at an academic medical center dividing her time between clinical work, conducting translational research, and teaching

Hannah developed an interest in research in high school where she was fortunate enough to have basic science exposure. She conducted breast cancer research on signaling pathways that were important to metastasis.  The lab focused on RAF kinase inhibitory protein (RKIP) signaling which functions as a metastasis suppressor by inhibiting cell migration, invasion, intravasation into blood or lymph vessels, and extravasation from circulatory vessels. These exciting projects unveiled how exciting science can be because she likened signaling to finding pieces of a puzzle.

Hannah remained in the same research lab during college. This allowed her to delve deeper into her passion for science to uncover more pieces to the puzzle in the RKIP signaling project.  From this experience she knew she wanted to further her knowledge in cancer research.  Consequently, a cancer project was her only criteria after graduation.  Luckily Hannah was able to work on a cancer project during my gap years. Her gap years also afforded her the opportunity to become exposed to Immunology and tumor immunology. She fell in love with this field during my time off. Hannah worked on resistance mechanisms to immunotherapy in melanoma, pancreatic cancer, and breast cancer and learned just how intriguing the human body is.  Hannah hopes to further her knowledge in immunology and discover novel ways the body’s best defense can perform its job in the fight against cancer.

Hannah graduated summa cum laude from the University of Delaware with a BS in neuroscience and a minor in biology. At UD, she received an honors degree with distinction and became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Hannah discovered her passion for neuroscience at a university talk on the subject, which motivated her to change her major and explore research. She first got involved in research at university when she spent a summer working in Dr. Mark Stanton’s neurobiology lab. She later joined Dr. Tania Roth’s behavioral epigenetics lab where she completed a senior thesis. The Roth Lab aims to better understand epigenetic and behavioral changes induced by early-life adversity with the ultimate goal of reducing the negative effects of child maltreatment. Hannah remained at the University of Delaware to complete a master’s degree in neuroscience and continue her work with Dr. Roth. Her master’s thesis explored the complex relationship between changes in DNA methylation in blood and brain tissue following early-life adversity. Hannah will continue exploring neuroscience and genetics while working towards her PhD with an additional focus on pathology. As an NIH-OxCam Scholar, she will work with Dr. Richard Proia and Prof. Frances Platt to explore lysosomal dysfunction and neurodegenerative disease, with a particular focus on Gaucher Disease and Parkinson’s Disease.

Henry graduated from Duke University magna cum laude with a degree in computational biology in 2018. Initially planning to study at the intersection of technology and conservation biology, he quickly developed a keen interest in utilizing computational models to investigate the underlying mechanisms of human disease. During his sophomore year, he worked with Dr. G. Allan Johnson at the Duke Center for In Vivo Microscopy building computational tools to visualize and analyze 3D computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans from mammalian brain atlases. Following his time in the Johnson lab, he joined the student-led Bass Connections: Enabling Precision Health and Medicine program and worked with Dr. Gregory A. Wray to investigate virulence of Burkholderia cenocepacia in Cystic Fibrosis patients. These experiences, among others, shaped his determination to pursue a career concentrated on connecting biology, mathematics, and computer science, with a focus on applications to human health.

After graduating from Duke, Henry worked as a software engineer in the DC area before joining the laboratory of Dr. Francis S. Collins at the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a postbaccalaureate IRTA fellow. At NIH, he studied the molecular underpinnings of diabetes using genetic and genomic techniques. Notably, one of Henry’s primary projects involved the largest genetic analysis of microRNA expression in human pancreatic islets to date and helped understand the molecular effects of genetic loci associated with diabetes. During his fellowship, he became acutely aware of the health inequities that persist worldwide and pursued training to prepare himself for a career focused on addressing systemic health inequities.

As an NIH Gates Cambridge Scholar, Henry aims to combine his interests in human disease and global health inequities to study the genetic basis of type 2 diabetes (T2D) across diverse ancestries. Ultimately, he hopes that his doctoral research will enhance the treatment and prevention of T2D for all people.

Born to a family of physicians in Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) and raised across Southeast Asia, Hsu Hnin (Sandra) Mon always harbored a curiosity for biomedicine in the context of shifting social, political, and geographical environments.

Sandra nurtured this curiosity further during her undergraduate days at Colgate University, where she majored in Molecular Biology, minored in Asian Studies, and explored the interdisciplinary linkages between diseases and the communities they impact. She conducted virology research under Dr. Geoffrey Holm, who introduced her to – and fostered her passion for – the field of infectious disease epidemiology.

After her Bachelor’s, Sandra pursued a research assistantship with Dr. Christopher Plowe at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, whose research on the molecular surveillance of artemisinin-resistant P. falciparum malaria expanded her professional ambitions into molecular epidemiology and pathogen genomics.

Sandra then completed a Master of Science in Public Health in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins, where she focused on infectious disease epidemiology, humanitarian health, and implementation science. Following her Masters, she joined the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights (CPHHR) under the mentorship of Drs. Chris Beyrer and Andrea Wirtz. Her research portfolio with CPHHR includes an implementation science study assessing obstacles to and innovations in the HIV care continuum for men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women (TGW) in Myanmar; an NIH R01 evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among young MSM and TGW who sell or exchange sex in Thailand; a mixed methods epidemiologic assessment of violence and mortality following the 2017 genocidal campaign against the Rohingya; and most recently, a project documenting and evaluating attacks on healthcare resulting from the 2021 attempted military coup d’état in Myanmar. She also serves as a Commissioner on the International AIDS Society-Lancet Commission on Health and Human Rights.

Today, Sandra’s research interests revolve around infectious disease dynamics, phylogenetic analysis, and health & human rights policy. Through her NIH-OxCam research with Dr. Tom Quinn and Prof. Christophe Fraser, Sandra aims to identify epidemiologic (population- and network-level) and evolutionary (within-host) factors associated with HIV acquisition and pathogenesis. She also intends to apply a human rights lens to this research to understand the role of stigma and other social disparities in perpetuating transmission within identified networks. She hopes that this research will help optimize HIV phylodynamic models to better design effective HIV interventions for the most vulnerable populations.

Beyond her research and health & human rights work, Sandra enjoys cooking, doting on her cats and (pet) rats, and managing her dog’s Instagram.

As a lifelong hemophiliac, Jackson has always been curious about the causes of disease. As an undergraduate, he found a professor, Dr. Nathan Wright, a structural biologist and biophysicist, who was concerned with just that, but on a molecular level. After a brief meeting with Dr. Wright that began with him shoving a pipette in his hand and ended with “see you tomorrow”, Jackson joined the Wright lab. Throughout undergrad, Jackson worked to discern the role of a giant cytoskeletal protein, obscurin, in differential subtypes. Previous work by the lab and others have shown that obscurin plays a major role in force transduction in striated muscle cells. Leaning on the Wright lab’s command of biophysics and the molecular biology and microscopy expertise of a close collaborator, Dr. Daniel Conway, Jackson was able to show that when expressed in breast and epithelial tissue, obscurin’s structure-function relationship is likely conserved. His work landed him presentations at two Biophysical Society Meetings and the Biomedical Engineering Annual meeting as well as the JMU Biochemistry Research Award and JMU Frank A. Palocsay Award in Undergraduate Chemistry Research.

After catching the bug for clinically relevant research and advanced technologies, Jackson headed to Boston, where he began a research associate position at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in the Proteomics Platform. The lab, captained by Dr. Steven A. Carr, is well known for deploying mass spectrometry within a variety of contexts to reveal insights otherwise left shrouded by genomic techniques alone. Jackson spearheaded the Carr lab’s data collection contributions to the National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Proteogenomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC). He has generated numerous multi-dimensional data sets for several non-small cell lung cancer cohorts, oligodendroglioma, and adult soft tissue sarcoma. Additionally, he advanced the Carr lab’s technological capabilities, resulting in a new semi-automated high-throughput workflow for highly precious, tissue limited samples. 

As a NIH Oxford scholar, he plans to study the impact of mechanosensitive genes on transcription and translation in the vascular and lymphatic systems in zebrafish.

https://www.rdm.ox.ac.uk/people/jackson-white 

Jacob Gordon, a native of Stokes County, North Carolina, graduated with university and departmental honors from Appalachian State University in 2018 with a B.S. in Biology. He conducted undergraduate research in the laboratory of Dr. Chishimba N. Mowa for three years. This research investigated the hypothesis that mechanical forces of the growing fetus on the female cervix direct mechano-sensitive cell signaling (mechanotransduction) in cervix tissue remodeling during pregnancy. Jacob’s published undergraduate work showed that certain mechano-sensitive molecules involved in cytoskeletal organization, tissue remodeling, and cell proliferation are dynamically expressed in murine cervix epithelia as pregnancy advances from early to late stages. These three years were formative in Jacob’s passion for research discovery and exploration in the context of human health and disease.

Upon concluding his undergraduate education, Jacob joined the NIH laboratory of Dr. Robin E. Stanley at the NIEHS in Research Triangle Park, NC as a Post-baccalaureate Fellow. For two years, he learned to pursue an integrative experimental approach utilizing biochemistry, structural biophysics, and molecular/cell biology to study pre-ribosomal RNA processing enzymes involved in building the eukaryotic ribosome. He contributed to two published works that uncovered the subcellular spatial regulation and functional catalytic motif elements of an essential pre-ribosomal RNA processing complex in eukaryotes, RNase-PNK. It was during these two years that Jacob became interested in the molecular machines that construct the ribosome, along with the mysterious class of diseases (known as ribosomopathies) that are associated with aberrant ribosome assembly/function in humans.

As an NIH Cambridge Scholar, Jacob is continuing his work on human molecular machines involved in ribosome assembly in the lab of Dr. Stanley at NIEHS. His co-mentor will be Professor Alan J. Warren at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, where Jacob will begin to study structural and functional mechanisms of mutant enzyme machinery identified in specific ribosomopathies. Jacob plans to ultimately pursue a career in academic medicine.   

James Anibal attended Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) from 2016-2020, earning a B.S. in Computer Science. After his second year at CWRU, James began his research career at the National Cancer Institute under the mentorship of Dr. Grégoire Altan-Bonnet. His projects involved (I) developing machine learning algorithms for single-cell data analysis and (II) developing natural language processing (NLP) methods for biomedical text mining. From this research, James has published in Science and Journal of Clinical Investigation.  He has also published a biomedical question-answering system on the Hugging Face NLP platform. In summer 2021, James worked as a research scientist at Afiniti, a multinational company aiming to improve business outcomes through AI-driven pairing of agents and customers.  

Beyond research, James is passionate about improving access to STEM education. As an instructor for FAES@NIH, he designed multiple courses/workshops focusing on computer programming and machine learning. He also partnered with OITE to design a Python programming course for summer interns at NIH. Finally, James founded EAST, an organization of scientists and educators with the shared goal of creating STEM opportunities for underserved groups, particularly incarcerated individuals. EAST partners with outreach organizations and technology companies to make these resources available for a national audience. 

For his graduate studies, James plans to develop scalable deep learning methods for noisy data from devices such as wearables, sensors, and smartphones. His research will be applied in two primary areas: (I) personalized healthcare for low-resource settings and (II) minimally invasive surgical procedures.  He also plans to develop multimodal analysis methods to learn detailed insights from increasingly diverse data. Upon graduation from Oxford, James plans to build accessible, cost-effective systems for precision oncology.

Jasmine graduated from Emory University with a B.S. in Biology and Psychology/Linguistics. As an undergraduate, she worked at the Clinical Virology Research Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Colleen Kraft, learning the microbiological and immunological components of clinical and public health research.

Inspired by her lab experience, Jasmine attended Boston University to pursue a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health and Biostatistics, where she developed a passion for integrating public health and statistics. During this time, she was a Maternal and Child Health Research Fellow working with Dr. Emily Rothman as an interventionist for adolescent dating violence perpetrators in the pediatric emergency department at Boston Medical Center. Jasmine also interned at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health performing the analytics of perinatal periods of risk for feto-infant mortality under the leadership of Dr. Hafsatou Diop.

After graduating with a degree in public health, Jasmine worked as a research statistician at the University of Florida Department of Epidemiology under Dr. Linda Cottler. She had the opportunity to lead a data team and mentor students, focusing on community engagement research needs in Florida.  She transitioned to the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics where she supported data analytics for pediatrics research under Dr. Matthew Gurka. A number of publications were produced during this time.

Jasmine’s interests further developed in perinatal epidemiology and statistical genetics. She was selected as a NHGRI T32 predoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, gaining a Master of Science in Biostatistics. As a fellow, she focused on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of preterm birth and preeclampsia with Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, research shifted to racial and ethnic disparities related to COVID-19 illness severity. She also explored methods of trans-ethnic GWAS of cardiometabolic traits in UK Biobank with Dr. Jean Morrison to increase ancestrally diverse participants represented in genetic studies. Following graduation, Jasmine was selected for an internship with Janssen/Johnson & Johnson focusing on modeling COVID-19 exposure during pregnancy.

Jasmine’s varied experiences in academia and industry as a biostatistician have fueled her desire to pursue a PhD to address health inequity. As an NIH Cambridge Scholar, her PhD research will delve into methods development in statistical genetics with focus on gene-environment interactions. Her work will be applied in maternal health research, exploring genetic and environmental contributions to adverse pregnancy outcomes across diverse populations.

Jenny first entered the world of scientific research as a freshman at Caltech in 2014. She joined the lab of Professor Marianne Bronner, where she learned the importance of the neural crest, a unique population of stem cells in developing vertebrate embryos. She continued to work in the Bronner lab throughout the rest of her undergraduate career, researching oncogenes involved in the initiation of neuroblastoma, a neural crest-derived cancer. During the summer of 2017, Jenny traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland through a summer exchange program between Caltech and the University of Iceland. She worked in the lab of Dr. Gudrun Valdimarsdottir, studying the role of TGF-beta signaling in breast cancer cells. Her work in Iceland not only expanded her research interests but also sparked a desire to study abroad which would eventually lead her to find the NIH OxCam program.

After graduating from Caltech in 2018 with a BS in Biology, Jenny joined the lab of Dr. Laura Kerosuo in the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) at the NIH, where she focused on studying the stem cell properties of the neural crest as a post-baccalaureate research fellow. While at the NIH, Jenny made the decision to take the long path of becoming a physician-scientist so that she could combine her lifelong desire to become a physician with her ever growing passion for science. Subsequently, she matriculated to the UAB Heersink School of Medicine in 2020 through the UAB Medical Scientist Training Program and has since completed 2 years of medical training.

Currently, Jenny has returned to studying the neural crest and neuroblastoma. She is working to identify novel genes that initiate aggressive neuroblastoma and create neuroblastoma models using human embryonic stem cell-derived neural crest cells. Ultimately, she hopes to set up 3D tumor models where the in vitro environment mimics the biological microenvironment to better understand ways in which neuroblastoma can be treated.

Jessica completed her undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology at Pomona College, where her research focused on exploring non-pharmacological approaches to treating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Following graduation, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct research on addiction and public policy in Portugal. Additionally, Jessica investigated primary immunodeficiencies at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Her participation in the NIH Academy on Health Disparities further deepened her commitment to promoting health equity in healthcare access in outcomes. In the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program, Jessica investigated the neuroimmunological underpinnings of neuropsychiatric diseases. Currently, as part of the NIH OxCam program, Jessica's research delves into the interplay between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, with a specific focus on spatial working memory in the marmoset. Her ultimate aim is to develop targeted pharmacological therapies that address the cognitive deficits associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.

Jiali graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in December 2019. Her interest in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience took shape over several diverse research experiences throughout her undergraduate career.

While participating in a rigorous biochemistry program at the University of Oxford her sophomore year, what began as a final project evolved into a cross-continental study of diabetes, stroke, and the development of dementia under the supervision Dr. Gina Hadley. This work cumulated in a couple of systematic reviews and prompted her long-term interest in applying research to functional neurological diseases. While at Oxford, Jiali was an executive board member of the Oxford AI Society, where she discovered her interest in the intersection of artificial and natural intelligence. Upon returning to Hopkins, she founded and chaired the Johns Hopkins AI Society, generating interdisciplinary discussion regarding AI applications in research, healthcare, and other industries among students and faculty. As a junior, she explored the use of AI in stroke research at the Brain Behavior Learning and Animation Lab, where she built a powerful computer to implement a deep learning algorithm that accurately tracks hand joint positions to study post-stroke rehabilitation. That following summer, she interned in Dr. Chris Baker’s Lab at the NIMH, where she studied human visual perception using artificial neural networks. This project earned the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award, allowing her to continue it throughout her senior year at Hopkins.

As an NIH-Oxford Scholar, Jiali aims to use computational modeling and a combination of intracranial and neuroimaging brain data to explore how humans harness sparse information and previous experiences to efficiently navigate new environments. She plans to attend medical school after completing her D.Phil. to combine her research with clinical practice as a physician-scientist. She hopes to conduct research that will further our understanding of natural intelligence and improve AI technology, while pushing the frontier of AI in medicine in translating her research to better diagnose and treat functional neurological disorders.

Jocelyne Rivera was born and raised in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico. Jocelyne’s concern in global health disparities arose from my experience at age 17, when representatives of her high school in Mexico encouraged her to assist American physicians who were providing free medical services in a small municipality near her hometown. Assisting these doctors as an English/Spanish translator in a small town was an indelible experience that opened her eyes to the unmet medical needs of the Third World.

In 2016, she came to the United States to pursue college education. She started her journey at Pima Community College (PCC) and then transferred to the University of Arizona (UA) to major in Biomedical Engineering (BME). During her sophomore year at UA, she joined the BME laboratory of Dr. Philipp Gutruf to develop a wearable flexible biosensor that monitors the patient’s blood pressure and glucose levels, allowing for clinical decision-making at home, and thus reducing frequency of clinic visits. Jocelyne applied for and was selected as a trainee in Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC), a prestigious undergraduate research training program for underrepresented students funded by NIH. As a MARC trainee, she chose to work in the Biomaterials laboratory of Dr. Minkyu Kim. Jocelyne’s work in Dr. Kim’s lab involved the innovation of drug delivery systems that can be translated into the clinic to target and treat cardiovascular disease. Though she was accepted to a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at Johns Hopkins University for the summer of 2020, the pandemic made it impossible for her to gain in-person research experience. Fortunately, Jocelyne was able to apply for and was awarded a position in the Multi-Scale Systems Bioengineering “virtual” NSF REU program at the University of Virginia. To investigate the impact of network defects present in hydrogels, she innovated an agent-based model that measures mechanical properties of hydrogels based on crosslinking efficiency and rate of polymer network formation using an agent-based modeling software. Although the summer research program at UVA was completed, she initiated an interdisciplinary collaborative project between the laboratories of Drs. Kim and Peirce-Cottler.

Jocelyne graduated Summa Cum Laude from University of Arizona BS in Biomedical Engineering in May 2021. As an NIH-Oxford Scholar, Jocelyne intends to accelerate the development of accessible diagnostics, treatments, and cures for the most devastating diseases facing humanity.

John graduated from the Honors Program at Colorado State University (CSU) in 2016 with a degree in Biomedical Sciences.  While at CSU, John worked three years in the laboratory of Dr. Claire Huang at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Colorado. His research focused on the study of candidate vaccines against dengue and West Nile viruses. He also performed research at CSU for a year in the laboratory of Dr. Rushika Perera examining dengue virus pathogenesis.

In addition, John spent a summer with Dr. James Crowe at the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center exploring nanodisc technologies as a therapeutic for respiratory syncytial virus infection. The following three summers he investigated antiviral immunity against influenza in humans in the lab of Dr. Paul Thomas at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. His work helped identify a novel genetic marker that detects patients at elevated risk for severe and potentially fatal influenza infections. 

Following graduation, John joined the laboratory of Dr. Heather Hickman in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as an NIH Postbaccalaureate Fellow. He developed a viral infection model of the oral mucosa to examine similarities and differences between the cutaneous and mucosal immune response following poxvirus infection. 

As an NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholar, John plans to explore immune mechanisms controlling or exacerbating viral infections. Upon completion of the Ox-Cam program, he aims for an academic career combining basic and translational research in viral immunology. 

John’s interest in biomedical research started in a high school biology class. The idea that complex processes such as DNA replication could be happening in cells that were invisible to the naked eye captivated his attention. This excitement continued to build while completing a degree in physiology and developmental biology in college and working in the immunology lab of Scott Weber, PhD at Brigham Young University. After graduating with honors, John spent a year and a half in the same lab working as a research staff and lab technician studying T cell receptor biology and T cell metabolism. His projects included using molecular biology to engineer high-affinity T cell receptors, flow cytometry to construct T cell chimeric antigen receptors, and the Seahorse bioenergetics machine to analyze the effect of metabolic protein knockouts on the mouse immune system. These efforts led to a publication in Frontiers in Immunology. Each of these projects had application within the field of cancer immunology and inspired continued study of the interactions between solid tumors and immune cells.

He then matriculated into medical school at the University of Utah with the desire to develop a more global picture of medicine and disease. After completing three years of medical school, he refined his clinical interest to neurosurgery, in part because of the wealth of research that has yet to be accomplished within the field of neuroscience. During this time, he also helped Norman Taylor, MD, PhD, transition his lab from Harvard University to his new facility at the University of Utah Department of Anesthesiology. The experience gave unique insight into building a new lab. The Taylor group focused on using optogenetics to study pain pathways in the brain, which solidified John’s path towards the neurological sciences.

In 2020 John was accepted into the NIH Medical Research Scholars Program and joined the lab of Mark Gilbert, MD at the National Cancer Institute. Considering his previous experiences with cancer immunology and interest in the neurosciences, the Gilbert lab’s translational immunology work developing immunotherapy approaches for glioblastoma was an excellent fit. What engaged John throughout his time at the NIH was the challenge of glioblastoma and he published a review on the subject in Frontiers in Oncology.

Moving forward, John’s goal is to become a surgeon-scientist as an academic neurosurgeon. He chose to work with Richard Mair, MD, PhD who is a brain tumor neurosurgeon at the University of Cambridge. His PhD project will study the interactions between glioblastoma, immune cells, and neurons to enhance understanding of the pathophysiology of the disease and identify novel treatments for brain tumor patients.

Jude attended the University of Washington to obtain a B.S. in biochemistry. He first undertook research after his freshman year when he was part of a study to develop in vivo treatments to bacterial biofilms on implanted surgical equipment. He really saw the benefit that early research exposure had on his future scientific ventures and wanted to give similar experiences to other underrepresented students. So, he helped develop and implement a summer Teaching Lab which offers underrepresented students’ early exposure to scientific research and has been helping to run this program over the last 8 years.

He continued his undergraduate research career in Dr. Jim Pfaendtner’s lab in the NIH NIDDK STEP-UP program. He was using molecular dynamics and simulations to build computational models which can lead to longer-lasting insulin. During undergrad, he also spent a summer doing research in the Center for Aerosols Impact on Climate and the Environment (CAICE) program. He worked with Dr. Francesco Paesani on studying the effect that aerosols have on the climate by making molecular models using the ion-Thole-type (iTTM) model and quantum mechanical simulations.

After graduating in 2017 with Honors in Research, he sought out more research at the NIH so he became an NHLBI IRTA fellow working in the labs of Dr. Richard Pastor and Dr. Alan Remaley. In a mix of computational and bench side studies, he researched high density lipoproteins and APOA1 protein mimetics in hopes of building proteins that increase cholesterol efflux and decrease atherosclerotic effects in blood vessels. He took a gap year to pursue a master’s degree in biotechnology specializing in bioinformatics as part of the Fulbright Program at Tampere University in Finland. He continued his involvement in the Fulbright program by becoming a Fulbright Alumni Ambassador. His work at the NIH opened his eyes to the physician-scientist career and he began his MD/PhD studies at The Ohio State College of Medicine.

As an NIH-Oxford student, Jude plans on studying the neural circuitry that underlies reinforcement learning pathways in the using neuroimaging and computational models.

Katherine graduated with honors from the University of Miami in 2015 with a B.S. in Biology with minors in Chemistry and Religious Studies, where she was a student in the Advanced Program for Integrated Science and Math (PRISM), an interdisciplinary, research focused program for top STEM students. As an undergraduate, she worked with Dr. Athula Wikramanayake, investigating the role and localization of Wnt signaling components during early embryonic development. She spent two summers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Dr. Charles Mullighan’s laboratory, where she examined genomic alterations in acute erythroid leukemia, a rare blood cancer with a dismal outcome. This experience ignited her passion for understanding mechanisms underlying malignancies and solidified her drive to become a physician-scientist.

Katherine matriculated at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine concurrently pursuing a M.D. and M.S. in Genomic Medicine. She continued to be fascinated by the genetic underpinnings of human disease and worked with Dr. Mustafa Tekin and Dr. Maria Figueroa studying, respectively, autosomal recessive etiologies of intellectual disability and epigenetic changes in the bone marrow leading to malignancy. After completing her third year, she was selected for a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation funded position in the NIH’s Medical Research Scholars Program, during which she worked with Dr. Javed Khan, elucidating resistance mechanisms to CD19 CAR T cell therapy in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

For her thesis work, Katherine will be researching under the tutelage of Dr. Javed Khan and Prof. Richard Gilbertson using high throughput omic analyses to understand clonal evolution, immune microenvironment, and treatment resistance in pediatric malignancies. After completing her graduate and medical schooling, she will pursue clinical training in pediatric hematology-oncology. She hopes to utilize genomics to gain insight into the mechanisms driving these tumors and translate these discoveries into novel therapeutic strategies for children with cancer.

Keitra developed a passion for community-engaged research during her undergraduate matriculation at Emory University, graduating with a high honors from the Department of Anthropology with a co-minor in Women’s Studies and Global Health. She then pursued advanced studies in nursing at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing to gain a deeper understanding of the biopsychosocial predictors of health and necessary interventions of care. Throughout nursing school Keitra served as the project coordinator for research studies focused on community and faith-based interventions to reduce the incidence of HIV in urban African American communities and as student doula to support childbearing families in Baltimore, MD. Her Doctorate of Nursing Practice capstone project focused on increasing accessing to trauma-informed family planning and reproductive health services for women with substance use disorders. She was chosen as part of the 2018 inaugural cohort of  “Emerging Scholars in Family Planning” by the Society of Family Planning for her capstone project and also named a “120 under 40” leader in Family Planning by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Prior to beginning the NIH OxCam Scholars Program, Keitra completed the highly selective National Clinician Scholars Program as a post-doctoral fellow and VA Scholar at Yale School of Medicine. During the two year program, she had the fortune of advancing her knowledge of health services research and served as the PI of multiple studies utilizing mixed method data collection, primary and secondary data analysis, and program evaluation.  As a dually board-certified family and psychiatric nurse practitioner Keitra provides primary health care services to patients across the life span in community health settings. She ultimately strives to combine her clinical insights with research to address health disparities across the lifespan in local and global contexts.

As an NIH OxCam Scholar, Keitra plans to explore geospatial and cardiometabolic indicators of women’s health across the lifespan in community and global settings in relation to maternal health outcomes using tenets of mHealth, translational science, epidemiology, and reproductive justice. She ultimately hopes to contribute to an understanding of disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality amongst marginalized populations in the U.S. and abroad and develop effective interventions that advance and protect the health of women and children in under-resourced communities.

Kelsey is originally from the metro-Atlanta area, where the presence of the CDC acted as a constant, peripheral reminder for the importance of disease research throughout her childhood. For her undergraduate education, she attended the University of Alabama (UA). Hoping to better understand disease research, she joined Dr. Laura Reed’s population genetics lab during her freshman year. The lab’s research focused on the genetic and environmental interactions that underlie metabolic diseases, and her early work there centered around the interactions that exist between diet and genotype. By the end of her sophomore year, she knew she wanted to pursue disease research for her career. In pursuit of that, she joined UA’s Accelerated Master’s Program and began her thesis research. Over the next 2.5 years, Kelsey worked to complete her undergraduate degree alongside her thesis research project to graduate from the University of Alabama with her B.S in Microbiology and her M.S. in Biology. Her thesis work focused on establishing a method and protocol for exercising fruit flies in the lab, which enabled her to study how exercise, diet, sex, and genotype interact together to influence the variation in metabolic disease states seen across populations. Towards the end of her master’s, Kelsey realized that while she loved disease research, the diseases she was most passionate about were infectious ones.

After graduation, Kelsey started a position as a Research Assistant in Dr. Olaf Kutsch’s lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) with the goal of transitioning into infectious disease research. The main research focus of the lab was to uncover molecular mechanisms of HIV-1 latency, but often work branched into a variety of other topics. Kelsey’s primary work centered around exploring the role of the tetraspanin CD151 in cancer and T-cell biology, but she was also actively involved in research concerning HIV reactivation and SARS-CoV-2 infection. Her work at UAB introduced her to a variety of immune diseases and pathogens, which solidified her choice to pursue infection disease research. This led her join the NIH OxCam Program for her PhD training. As an NIH-Cambridge scholar, under the co-mentorship of Dr. Leah Katzelnick (NIAID) at the NIH and Dr. Jonathan Heeney in the Department of Veterinary Medicine at Cambridge, Kelsey will explore the importance of re-exposure in maintaining enduring, protective immunity to dengue infection. Upon graduation, Kelsey hopes to continue to pursue a career in viral immunology research and one day establish her own lab researching the interplay between viruses and host immunity. 

Kritika’s passion for biomedical research started in high school during an internship at Acetylon Pharmaceuticals where she worked on epigenetics and malaria. This drove Kritika to pursue additional research experiences at the Wirth Lab at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the Long Lab at the NIAID. Her research experiences in high school also inspired her to found a non-profit, Malaria Free World, which engages in national and international peer-to-peer education on infectious diseases.
 
In 2020, Kritika graduated summa cum laude from Northeastern University BS in Bioengineering and a minor in chemistry. She attended Northeastern as a University Scholar, member of the Honors Department, and a Presidential Scholar. She furthered her passional for translational research and spent 4 years in the lab of Ralph Mazitschek at Massachusetts General Hospital working on malaria, epigenetics, and platform development. Throughout undergrad, she also developed her passion for connecting the bench and the bedside by shadowing physician-scientist, Dr. Ken Anderson at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. At Northeastern, she founded the Northeastern University Global Health Initiative (NUGHI) which organizes and develops novel content for an annual, international and interdisciplinary student-led global health conference while connecting students, faculty, and experts.
 
A recipient of the Rhodes, Truman, and Goldwater Scholarships, Kritika understands that science alone will not eradicate disease. She aims to integrate biomedical research, clinical practice, and global health policy in her career and is excited to pursue her PhD at the intersection of bioengineering, chemical biology, and immuno-oncology. Her goal is to develop technologies and therapies that can be widely adapted in high- and low-resource settings.

Lauren graduated with honors and highest distinction from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill in 2021 with a B.S. in Biology and minors in Medical Anthropology and Statistics & Analytics. During her first year at UNC-Chapel Hill, Lauren joined the Infectious Disease Epidemiology & Ecology Lab (IDEEL) at the UNC Institute of Global Health and Infectious Diseases, where she was mentored by Dr. Steven Meshnick, Dr. Jonathan Parr, and Dr. Jonathan Juliano. Over the course of her time with IDEEL, Lauren worked on several studies aimed at understanding the molecular epidemiology of malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her work culminated in an honors thesis investigating the prevalence of anti-malarial drug resistance in Dschang, Cameroon.

After graduating, Lauren joined the Human Immunology Section of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC/NIAID/NIH) as a post-baccalaureate fellow under Dr. Daniel Douek. While at the VRC, Lauren worked on a variety of timely projects aimed at understanding the immune response generated by SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in humans and non-human primates. Her team was particularly interested in evaluating the B cell response to heterologous antigen exposures given the continued emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants. In addition to COVID-19 research, she also worked to implement phage immunoprecipitation sequencing (PhIP-seq)— a high-throughput method for detecting antigen reactivity in human sera—at the VRC.

As an NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholar, Lauren is hoping to combine phylogenetic inference techniques and phylodynamic modeling with laboratory experiments to advance our understanding of how viruses evolve. She is particularly interested in interrogating the factors that influence and constrain the evolution of enterovirus capsid proteins.

Lauren's high school research on gestational diabetes with mentor Dr. Louiza Belkacemi sparked her enduring interest in the global epidemic of cardiometabolic diseases. Especially committed to deepening understandings of diabetes across diverse populations, she has co-authored articles on gene expression, genetic associations and health outcomes, and served in community health advocacy. Upon Lauren's graduation in 2016, Stanford recognized her with the Deans' Award for Academic Achievement and John W. Lyons Award for Service, for her contributions to the university and broader communities. 

During her public health training, Lauren orchestrated a jointly-mentored thesis investigating gene-environment interactions in a 200,000-person cohort within UK Biobank, with respect to diabetes status. She planned and executed the study with the mentorship of London-based health equity researcher Dr. Rohini Mathur, and Oxford-based diabetes genetics and genomics researchers Dr. Anubha Mahajan and Professor Mark McCarthy. Lauren then worked as an Intramural Research Trainee with Dr. Robert Hanson at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center-based NIDDK Branch, investigating genetic associations with physiological traits in Southwestern Native American patients. She is grateful to continue her diabetes research with a team of mentors also dedicated to the interface of genetics, epigenetics, genomics and population health.

These learning opportunities--motivated by longtime interests in cardiometabolic health and science communication--have deepened Lauren's commitment to promoting bench-to-bedside medicine across diverse populations. In the coming years, she looks forward to investigating how genetic and environmental diversity jointly influence cardiometabolic disease etiology, to ultimately shape prevention and treatment strategies.

Lawrence first appreciated the noxious synergy between poverty and pathogens in a class on public health at Haverford College, which kindled his aspiration to become a physician and address health inequalities. Lawrence completed his undergraduate research thesis in the lab of Dr. Iruka Okeke at Haverford, studying virulence factors and antimicrobial peptides produced by diarrheagenic E. coli. He also helped develop diagnostic assays to detect drug resistance mutations in Hepatitis C virus with Dr. Adele McCormick during a semester abroad at University College London. After college, Lawrence completed a post-baccalaureate fellowship in the lab of Dr. Mark Connors at the National Institutes of Health, where he studied the cytotoxic T cell response to HIV infection in vaccine recipients and in rare patients whose immune systems can control HIV. Lawrence continued his research efforts as a medical student at UC San Diego, where he studied malaria genetics in the lab of Dr. Elizabeth Winzeler and the spatial epidemiology of antimalarial drug distribution in Uganda with Dr. Ross Boyce. Lawrence’s mentors and role models have inspired him to further refine his aspirations to becoming a physician-scientist who develops vaccines for infectious diseases. As an OxCam scholar, Lawrence plans to work on malaria vaccine development under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Seder at the NIH Vaccine Research Center and Dr. Simon Draper at Oxford’s Jenner Institute.

As someone who constantly has lots of questions about the way the things work, I have been involved in research with different types of organism systems (plants, fruit flies, yeast, human) since my undergraduate years. These research opportunities have taken me from my college, Humboldt State, to Michigan State, Johns Hopkins, and the NIH (NICHD and NIAID). Doing research at a variety of institutions instilled in me a need to perpetually be challenged by new ideas, new environments, and to synthesize my understanding in ways that can make small improvements in the world. I joined the OxCam program and the UTHSCSA MSTP for this purpose. During my PhD training, I will be working between the laboratories of Dr. Armin Raznahan and Professor Jason Lerch. I am hopeful that the outcome of my PhD project can partially help close the translational gap between mouse models and human neuroscience.  

As an undergraduate at Georgetown University, Lydia studied biochemistry with a minor in mathematics, but she spent most of her time focused on protein biophysics as a member of Dr. Rodrigo Maillard’s research group. She developed statistics- and simulation-based data analysis tools for the Maillard Lab to use on data from single molecule optical tweezers experiments probing protein allostery. A summer internship with Dr. Amelie Stein through the Rosetta Commons solidified her interest in computational biophysics, and she returned the next year to work with Dr. Stein and Dr. Kresten Lindorff-Larsen at the University of Copenhagen on structure-based prediction methods for mutational effects on protein stability.

After graduating from Georgetown, Lydia spent a year as a research master’s student in Dr. Tuomas Knowles’ group at Cambridge, where she used data-driven computational approaches to characterize and predict biomolecular phase separation processes. She is looking forward to building on this work during her PhD and combining experimental and data-driven work in the Knowles group with molecular simulations in Dr. Robert Best’s group at NIDDK. Lydia hopes that by working across the molecular and cellular scales to achieve quantitative understanding of biomolecular systems, especially protein-protein interactions, she can help improve our understanding of molecular mechanisms in health and disease.

Madeline is an MD/PhD student and hopes to ultimately contribute to the greater understanding of and personalized treatment for complex heterogeneous neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. 

Growing up, Madeline worked extensively with children with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism. She was impressed by their resilience in overcoming challenges and was fascinated by the ways in which they processed the world differently, especially social environments. This inspired her to pursue autism research while at the College of William and Mary, where she joined a neuroscience lab that studied autism under supervision of Drs. Cheryl Dickter and Joshua Burk. Here, she used EEG to investigate the spectrum of autistic traits in neurotypical individuals and learned how this could help scientists gain a greater understanding of the heterogeneity in people with autism.

Excited by the prospects of using neuroimaging to study in vivo brain phenotypes and behavior, after college Madeline joined the Clinical and Translational Neuroscience Branch at the National Institute of Mental Health under Dr. Karen Berman. Here, in addition to expanding her neuroimaging knowledge to include MRI, PET, and MEG, she also was first exposed to genetics research in a rare genetic, neurodevelopmental disorder called Williams syndrome. 

Madeline became excited by the opportunity to study Williams syndrome and other rare genetic disorders that may contribute to our understanding of more common neuropsychiatric disorders. This inspired her to continue working with Dr. Berman as a PhD student. In collaboration with Drs. Ed Bullmore and Petra Vertes at The University of Cambridge, Madeline hopes to conduct multimodal neuroimaging, genetic, and computational research to investigate how genetics and neural development impact brain structure and function, ultimately contributing to disease etiology. She hopes to create new discoveries about the gene-brain-behavior link and how to better develop personalized treatments for individuals with neuropsychiatric disorders. 

Madeline graduated with Distinction and Honors from Carleton College with a B.A. in Biology. During this time, she explored the molecular basis of sexually dimorphic coloration and behavioral traits in lizards under the supervision of Dr. Matt Rand and completed her Senior Integrative Exercise on cellular stress response in type 2 diabetes with Dr. John Tymoczko, for which she was awarded Distinction. 

Long interested in medicine, she sought to gain exposure to translational research and spent three years as a post-baccalaureate IRTA fellow in the lab of Dr. Charles Venditti at the National Human Genome Research Institute. There, she studied the pathophysiology underlying methylmalonic acidemia, an inborn error of metabolism, as well as developed novel biomarkers and gene therapies for the disorder. 

This time at the NIH cemented her desire to pursue a career as a physician scientist and she chose to join the University of Minnesota Medical Scientist Training Program, where she has completed her preclinical coursework at this time. Her scientific interests now focus on cellular processes and signaling within the context of immunologically-mediated disorders. As an NIH Cambridge Scholar, she will investigate the role of CD8+ T cell signatures in clinical outcomes of primary immunodeficiencies and T cell exhaustion. 

Beyond the lab, she desires to use medicine and healthcare systems as tools to promote social justice, particularly within the framework of global health. She completed a NIH Academy Fellowship, focusing on health disparities in the DC area, and a Walter H. Judd International Graduate & Professional Fellowship examining pediatric infectious disease management in low-resource settings within Uganda.

Raised in Louisiana, I attended Tulane University to play baseball and study Cell and Molecular Biology. After suffering a shoulder injury on the baseball field, I was afforded more time to work in research labs at the Tulane School of Medicine to complement my coursework. For my first research experience, supervised by Dr. Muthusamy Kunnimalaiyaan, I explored ways to overcome therapeutic resistance in advanced thyroid cancer. I then transitioned to a virology and immunology lab led by Drs. Dahlene Fusco and Arnaud Drouin to explore Zika virus-host interactions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I became a research staff member for three of the lab’s clinical studies on COVID-19 that included an observational study and two therapeutic trials. Witnessing the importance of virology and immunology research during the pandemic inspired me to join NIAID as a post-baccalaureate fellow under Dr. Eli Boritz to learn more about how viruses could be studied. There, my research focused on method development to better understand how HIV infection persists in the presence of antiretroviral therapy.

As an NIH-Cambridge Scholar, I am continuing to study HIV persistence with the goal of identifying and describing host factors that regulate HIV latency. In the future, I hope to keep researching how some viruses, such as HIV and herpesviruses, persist indefinitely within their hosts, the relationship between virus persistence and chronic and delayed illnesses, and strategies to cure persistent infections.

Born in Iraq and raised in Oman, Mario developed a love for science during his time at Al-Ibdaa International School in Muscat. He came to America at the age of fifteen, and at Henry Ford II High School he promised his AP Government teacher – who had Parkinson’s – that he would cure the disease. To that end, he studied neuroscience at the University of Michigan Honors College. In 2014, Mario joined the lab of Prof. Robert Kennedy and worked with Dr. Omar Mabrouk to understand changes in brain chemistry during Parkinson’s disease treatments. Using in vivo microdialysis followed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry (MS), he helped characterize changes in the levels of over 25 different neurotransmitters and molecules following L-DOPA administration or deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the brains of rats subjected to 6-hydroxydopamine lesions (a model for Parkinson’s). The following year, under the supervision of Prof. Alexander Zestos, he worked on his honors thesis showing a neuroprotective effect of sodium benzoate with lower levels of L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia in the 6-hydroxydopamine rat model.

During his last year at the University of Michigan, Mario designed and taught a short course offered to freshmen in the Honors College. The course examined the mystery and wonder of neurological diseases and discussed recent advances in neuroscience that have led to better treatments. Mario graduated magna cum laude from the University of Michigan in 2016. Later that year, through the International Program for the Advancement of Neurotechnology (IPAN), Mario studied multi-sensory integration with Dr. Malte Bieler in the lab of Prof. Ileana Hanganu-Opatz at the Centre for Molecular Neurobiology in Hamburg, Germany. There, he helped show that anatomical connections exist between visual and tactile pathways in the brain, and that the somatosensory cortex is involved in integrating tactile as well as visual information.

In 2017, Mario began his medical studies at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed two years of medical school and is now working with Dr. Derek Narendra (NINDS) and Prof. Patrick Chinnery (Mitochondrial Biology Unit) to understand the mechanism by which mutations in the proteins CHCHD2 and CHCHD10 lead to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Marlene graduated summa cum laude from Colgate University with high honors in molecular biology and a minor in Chinese. During her time at Colgate, Marlene completed an honors thesis investigating sensory organ development and regeneration in blind cavefish (Astyanax mexicanus) – this project provided the basis for her successful Beckman Scholarship and Goldwater Scholarship. Outside of the lab, Marlene volunteered as an EMT and managed other students as a coordinator for the Southern Madison County Volunteer Ambulance Corps. Additionally, she worked as a head first responder for Colgate Recreation and tutored biology courses.

After graduating from Colgate University, Marlene began her MD/PhD studies at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. While she had always had an interest in molecular neurobiology from her prior research and coursework at Colgate, studying neuroscience and neuroanatomy during her first two years in medical school solidified neurology as her primary interest both clinically and from a research perspective. Specifically, Marlene took an interest in the mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental disorders while shadowing in pediatric neurology and medical genetics.

Under the supervision of Dr. Francis McMahon at the NIMH and Professor Francis Szele at Oxford, she will use human iPSC and organoid models to better understand the genetics underlying developmental neuropsychiatric disorders.

Marya graduated from Arizona State University with a B.S. in biochemistry. As a rising freshman, she became involved in hypothesis-driven research in Dr. Peter Jurutka’s molecular endocrinology laboratory. Her main focus was to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying putative vitamin D-vitamin D receptor signaling modulators, in addition to using in vitro techniques to demonstrate the influence of vitamin D in serotonin biosynthesis, reuptake, and catabolism. Next, she was extended a summer internship opportunity in Dr. David Azorsa’s pediatric cancer laboratory as a TGen Helios Scholar. The specific aim of her investigation was to examine the application of high-throughput functional screening as an assay platform for the efficient and rapid analysis of drug sensitivities and resistance in a panel of Ewing's sarcoma lines.

After graduating, she was accepted as an Ivy Neurological Science Scholar at TGen in Dr. Michael Berens’ and Dr. Nhan Tran’s CNS Tumor laboratory studying mechanisms of glioblastoma invasion. Then, to become more involved at the intersection of healthcare and education, as an AmeriCorps VISTA at a public, safety-net hospital, she served as a health literacy educator for at-risk, justice-involved populations. At the hospital, she also frequently observed in the Emergency Department leading to a collaboration with Dr. Murtaza Akhter in which she was able to conduct clinical research in the form of retrospective chart reviews. Finally, she was a NIH postbac IRTA fellow in Dr. Sonja Scholz’s laboratory investigating the genetic etiology of atypical parkinsonism syndromes. She has worked on several, large international whole-genome sequencing studies. Further, during her time as an IRTA, she was also selected as a NIH Academy Fellow.

As an OxCam scholar and student in the Undiagnosed Diseases Program, she hopes to meaningfully contribute to improving diagnosis and treatment options for patients suffering with rare diseases, with a specific focus on neurodegenerative conditions. She plans on attending medical school after completion of her doctoral studies.

During his undergraduate training, Mathieu specialized in studying the wound-healing structure and process of plants from the perspective of physical biochemistry. To gain insights into this field, he employed a range of analytical techniques, including NMR, EM, AFM, and GC/LC-MS. Fascinated by the interplay of chemistry, physics, and human biology, Mathieu decided to further explore the realm of protein structure and function. This led him to undertake an internship at Harvard Medical School, where he immersed himself in the disciplines of x-ray crystallography and cryo-EM. His primary focus was to investigate the structure and interactions of ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like proteins with DUBs.

Driven by an increasing interest in unraveling the fundamental principles of biology to elucidate human pathology, Mathieu subsequently joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). During his time there, he dedicated his efforts to unraveling the biomolecular processes underlying familial eosinophilia.

Mathieu's extensive and diverse research experience in chemistry and physics has endowed him with the versatility to tackle various research questions. Currently, he has embarked on a combined MD-PhD (MSTP) program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), NINDS-NIH, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, affiliated with the University of Cambridge. His studies revolve around investigating the underlying causes of specific cell vulnerability in neurodegeneration, blending his clinical and research interests.

Matt is an MD-PhD student in UNC Chapel Hill’s Medical Scientist Training Program. Prior to medical school, Matt worked at NIH under the mentorship of Dr. Christopher Hourigan to develop biomarkers of residual disease and immunotherapy response for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). He would publish his main project (PMID: 27544285) which involved residual disease detection in the setting of autologous bone marrow transplantation. Matt went on to translate this research into the clinic by developing a PCR-based diagnostic test which served as the endpoint of a clinical trial at NIH.

Matt graduated cum laude from Tufts University in 2014, earning Highest Thesis Honors for two years of work in Dr. Andrew Camilli’s lab. He traces his interest in immunology to time spent in the Camilli lab working with a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Mara Shainheit. Together they would reveal mechanisms by which pneumococcus evades host immunity by regulating its anti-phagocytic capsule (PMID: 26111465). He also researched Actinomyces with Dr. Lori Bergeron at New England College (PMID: 26685151). He was awarded the Nathan T. Gantcher Scholarship and an INBRE Fellowship as an undergraduate and was awarded the University Cancer Research Fund Scholarship from UNC in 2017. Matt is focused on understanding the dynamics of human immunopathology by integrating time series data across different omic platforms to build diagnostic tools and understand the biology behind clinical outcomes in autoimmune disease, infection and cancer. 

Matthew is from Westerville, OH, and graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2015. As an undergraduate he conducted research in the lab of Dr. Bruce Jayne. His research focused on the interaction of arboreal snakes with their environment, where it was shown that body shape and surface features (e.g. roughness and incline) have immense impact on modality and speed of locomotion across species.

After college, Matthew pursued further research in the lab of Dr. James Wells at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. He studied neural crest biology in the context of enteric nervous system formation of the murine and human foregut. He developed a passion for the neural crest, or so called “4th germ layer”, which is a remarkable embryonic cell type that gives rise to a vast array of terminally differentiated cells and tissues – including chondrocytes, bone, neurons, Schwann cells, chromaffin cells of the adrenal medulla, and melanocytes.

As a medical student at Ohio University, Matthew sought out further research experience through the NIH Medical Research Scholars Program. He joined the lab of Dr. William J. Pavan, with whom he will continue his doctoral studies along with Drs. Pedro Moura Alves and Colin Goding at Oxford. His work will focus on the factors regulating melanin production and how aberrations in these pathways can lead to and/or exacerbate the course of melanoma. Upon completion of his doctoral studies, Matthew plans to become a pediatric geneticist with a focus on rare disease medicine. He aims to model neurocristopathies with the goal of developing novel clinical treatment modalities.

Mehdi graduated Summa Cum Laude from North Carolina State University with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and a minor in Physics. His lifelong concern of the negative health effects that astronauts face during space flight burgeoned into a fascination of how forces affect cell development and function. As an undergraduate, Mehdi joined Dr. Elizabeth Loboa’s Cell Mechanics Laboratory at NCSU and investigated the mechanosensitivity of human adipose derived stem cells. Specifically, Mehdi worked on identifying the primary cilia to be a critical sensor that detects mechanical and electrical signals which direct adult stem cell differentiation. From this experience, Mehdi co-authored on two publications and won several undergraduate research awards.

After graduating from NCSU, Mehdi received the NIH Intramural Research Training Award and joined Dr. Daniel Douek’s Human Immunology lab at the Vaccine Research Center. Here, Mehdi contributed to developing a novel microfluidic based system with the goal of enabling the high throughput sorting of the latent reservoir of HIV. 

After his year long experience at the VRC, Mehdi won the Whitaker International Fellowship which funded a year of research in Dr. Kevin Chalut’s Stem Cell Biophysics lab at the University of Cambridge, Stem Cell Institute. Here, Mehdi is investigating the role of forces in directing embryonic stem cell differentiation, specificity focusing on the mechanosensitivity of the nucleus. 

Mehdi is driven to strengthen the understanding of how forces affect cell behavior, in hopes to gain insight of relevant disease states such as Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy and progeria or health concerns such as the rapid tissue degeneration of astronauts in microgravity. Mehdi also hopes to gain better control of stem cell differentiation to ultimately develop novel tissue engineering and stem cell based therapy. 

As an undergraduate at the University of Florida (UF), Mihael studied differential mathematical modeling for two summers at the University of Cambridge, UK under the supervision of Professor Christopher Gilligan, CBE. His research in Professor Gilligan’s group involved developing statistical models for coffee leaf rust and A. flavus spread in hopes of mitigating their harmful effects. In addition to his engineering coursework at UF, he volunteered in the Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory led by Professor Jose Principe. Under his supervision, Mihael incorporated focus of attention to better solve visual question answering tasks and developed a recurrent kernel machine for small-sample image classification. Mihael gained additional experience in machine learning while interning in Dr. Stephen Nuske’s group at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) during his final summer. Mihael's research at CMU aimed to correlate image data of in-situ Sorghum bicolor plants to their respective genotype for the first time, allowing for rapid genotype prediction. Through all his research experiences, he contributed to 7 publications, 5 of which he is the first author, and received recognition from UF through the University Scholars Program and the U.S. government through the Barry Goldwater Scholarship. He also received recognition as UF’s Outstanding 4-year Scholar for his academic and extracurricular achievements.

Upon graduating, he intends to apply for a faculty position at an academic institution to teach and conduct research in the AI field. By combining both mathematics and biology, Mihael strives to use advanced computational techniques to better understand the transfer and encoding of information in the brain.

In high school, Mitchell Sun attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy where he was introduced to research in the laboratory of Dr. Yulia Komarova in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Under Dr. Komarova, he studied how the role of the microtubule cytoskeleton in lung vascular permeability can provide therapeutic targets in treating inflammatory lung diseases. After graduating high school, he went on to study a B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago in their guaranteed medicine program (GPPA), which allowed him the safety to pursue more of his interests adjacent to medicine. He continued research in Dr. Komarova’s laboratory where he expanded his project to studying the hypoxic mechanism of vascular permeability in pulmonary arterial hypertension and worked on developing a method of studying the protein interactome through a microsystem platform to pull down protein complexes.

Through the Summer Internship Program at the National institutes of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, he pursued a diverse array of research with Dr. Zhengping Zhuang during his college summers which included characterizing a novel hypoxia inducible factor mutant mouse model, developing a chimeric antigen receptor t-cell (CAR-T) targeting glioblastoma models, examining the role of fatty acid oxidation in macrophage phenotype and its impact on cancer migration in hepatocellular carcinoma, and developing a compound to downregulate chronic activation of the hypoxia pathway in disease states.

His experience with translational research pushed him to pursue an MD/PhD at Baylor College of Medicine. During his PhD, he aims to further develop an immunotherapeutic cancer vaccine in Dr. Zhengping Zhuang’s lab at the NCI and to investigate its immunological mechanisms with Professor Michael Dustin and Professor Charlotte Deane at the University of Oxford.

After Neha graduated from high school and partook in initial scientific research, she pursued additional laboratory experiences as an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). In research rotations at the National Cancer Institute, UMBC, and at the Johns Hopkins University, Neha engaged in a range of projects that examined tumor immunology and cancer genomics in the context of immunotherapy clinical efficacy, which further strengthened her passion for these fields. Neha realized that a dual-degree program would therefore be the best option to weld her strong interests in science and medicine. After she graduated summa cum laude from UMBC, Neha was selected in the South Texas Medical Scientist Training Program in San Antonio as an M.D./Ph.D. student. After she completed her second year of medical school, Neha was accepted into the OxCam program. In her graduate studies between the NCI and Oxford, Neha will now elucidate the implications of p53 isoforms on immune cells and immunotherapy in esophageal cancer.

Nick first decided to pursue medicine and neuroscience when he was a high school student in Sarasota, Florida. He attended a lecture at his local hospital where a neurosurgeon demonstrated how deep brain stimulation (DBS) was used to treat a Parkinson’s disease (PD) patient. Witnessing the instantaneous cessation of the patient’s resting tremor upon activation of the stimulator left a lasting impression on Nick and convinced him to pursue medicine and neuroscience research as an undergraduate at the University of Florida (UF) Honors Program. The summer before his first year at UF, Nick secured a research position at the McKnight Brain Institute (MBI) at UF. Nick worked with Dr. Florian Siebzehnrubl and Dr. Loic Deleyrolle in the Department of Neurosurgery where he studied glioblastoma, the most common and lethal form of brain cancer. Nick’s research on glioblastoma developed into his senior thesis project where he demonstrated that glioblastoma cells expressing the transcription factor Zeb1 preferentially form a compartment of glioblastoma cells that rebound from radiation therapy. Nick’s thesis project unanimously received Highest Honors by his Thesis Committee, and he graduated Summa Cum Laude from UF. After graduating from UF, Nick was selected to be a Frost Scholar to complete his MSc in neuroscience at Exeter College, University of Oxford. During this time, Nick completed two theses: for the first, Nick worked with Dr. Tommas Ellender in the Department of Pharmacology and uncovered the importance of a specific neural progenitor cell in determining the neural circuitry of the basal ganglia, a brain region involved in motor function. For the second, Nick worked with Prof. Stephanie Cragg in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and determined that deficits in dopamine neurotransmission could be seen more than a year before motor impairments and cell death in a mouse model of PD.

Nick’s long term career goal is to become a physician-scientist specializing in treating patients with neurodegenerative diseases in the clinic and developing novel treatments to stop the process of neurodegeneration in the lab. Towards this goal, Nick has completed his second year of medical school at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and is looking forward to starting his PhD at the University of Cambridge as an NIH Cambridge Trust Scholar. The focus of his thesis project will be on understanding virally-mediated origins of neurodegeneration in an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) mouse model.

Nisita grew up in central New Jersey and discovered a love for scientific research during her undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). After becoming an Operations Coordinator for Camp Kesem at JHU, a camp for children whose parents suffer from cancer, she decided to combine her interests in medicine and engineering to help alleviate the burden of disease for patients.

Nisita researched in the lab of Dr. Rebecca Schulman for three years during her undergraduate years where she worked with DNA nanotechnology systems. Her work eventually led to a publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society which highlighted a DNA stand buffer system that could keep a target stand of DNA constant in chemically noisy environments. After this introduction to scientific research, Nisita went on to continue her training through the Biomedical Engineering Summer Internship Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Here she worked in the Clinical Center under Dr. Bradford Wood where she created a flow-through drug elution system to measure the chemotherapeutic release rate from embolic beads used in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. When she returned to JHU for her final year, Nisita wanted to expand on her biological research experiences, and decided to join Dr. Marc Ostermeier’s lab. She studied the effects of specific point mutations in the beta-lactamase protein in E. coli on bacterial growth, without the presence of antibiotics in the media. This research was eventually published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, and Nisita continued in Dr. Ostermeier’s lab to study the specific stress pathways upregulated in these E. coli as a master’s student.

After finishing her master’s degree, Nisita attended medical school at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and has since completed her preclinical years. In 2022, she was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue her PhD research at the University of Cambridge. During her PhD, Nisita plans to work in the labs of Prof Gonçalo Bernardes and Dr. Christine Alewine to create nanobody-drug conjugates that target the mesothelin protein to treat pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

In the future, Nisita hopes to lead her own research group in an academic environment while continuing her interests outside of lab which include singing, doing triathlons, and teaching.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) continues to present a significant challenge to successful development of therapies for central nervous system (CNS) diseases. Mechanical modulation of the BBB using focused ultrasound (FUS) and microbubbles (MB) has shown considerable promise in increasing drug delivery into the brain. However, there are still several concerns regarding safety of such alternative drug delivery methods and requires better model systems to study adverse bioeffects. Olive’s doctoral project focused on understanding brain endothelial cell behavior in vitro when stimulated ultrasonically with microbubbles. She created 2- and 3-dimensional, flow based BBB models to utilize in ultrasound studies. Most recently, she started to develop novel immune-neurovascular models to better understand microglial-vascular crosstalk in homeostatic and pathological states.

Since the completion of her doctoral studies, Olive has gone on to continue supporting her NIH laboratory’s ongoing neurovascular projects as well as working with the OP8 IRTA Scheduling Team to assist the clinic staff on scheduling study participants. In addition, prior to returning to medical school, she is finishing a Master’s degree in Law (ML) at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she is learning about the nuance and complexity of statutory, case, and regulatory law in shaping the American healthcare system. She hopes to incorporate her experiences in research, medicine and law to push for policy changes and system reforms in the healthcare industry as she further advances in her professional, research and academic career(s). 

Poorva graduated with honors from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018 with a B.A. in Biology: Neuroscience. As an undergraduate, she worked with Dr. Yehuda Ben-Shahar investigating the role of the potassium channel SEI in regulating neuronal excitability in periods of acute temperature stress. This project inspired a deep interest in using basic biology to understand complex mechanisms in neurologic disease.

After graduating, Poorva worked at the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford as a Research Professional in Dr. Michelle James Lab. She was interested in developing novel cell-specific and sensitive radiotracers to image neuroinflammation in the context of neurodegenerative disease. She was specifically interested in discovering and validating novel biomarkers of microglia to visualize these heterogenous cells in vivo. Alongside her work as a researcher, she also worked part time as an Emergency Medical Technician providing basic life support to patients in transport.

In 2020, Poorva matriculated into the MSTP at University of Miami. Here she was heavily involved in MSTP programming including planning MSTP symposiums, clinical case reviews, journal clubs, and coordinating mentorship. While completing her clinical clerkships, she identified her medical interests in hematology/oncology and neurology. In summer of 2022, Poorva began her training in the OxCam program and plans to complete her Dphil as a collaboration between Dr. Irene Cortese at NINDS, and Profs. Hashem Koohy and Agne Antanaviciute at Oxford to study adaptive immunity in progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. Ultimately, Poorva dreams to remain in academia as a trained clinician, research leader, and professor.

Pratik graduated from The University of Texas at Dallas summa cum laude, with Collegium V Honors, and as a Eugene McDermott Scholar. While an undergraduate, he worked to optimize microfluidic systems for the independent treatment of axons from soma for nociceptive involvement under the supervision of Dr. Joseph Pancrazio in the bioengineering department. In 2021, Pratik worked at PerkinElmer Genomics, now Revvity, to develop a novel primary screening assay for the lipid storage disease Cerebrotendinous Xanthomastosis. He has additionally conducted research as an undergraduate at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore under Dr. Jai Polepalli, working to design a co-immunoprecipitation methodology for the quantification of the serotonin 5HT3A receptor, and at the Yale School of Medicine under Dr. Monkol Lek, where he helped develop a single-cell muscle cell atlas.

During his graduate study as an NIH Cambridge Scholar, Pratik will work to improve methods of prime editing stem cells and obtaining downstream pooled readouts. Coupling method development with single-cell transcriptome readouts, he will then investigate how individual variants affect phenotypic outcomes and disease states.

Rachel’s passion for computational neuroscience research began as an undergraduate at the College of William & Mary, where she engaged in both wet and dry lab research. She was awarded two fellowships to work with Dr. Lisa Landino, whose biochemistry research investigates the role of oxidative damage to proteins in neurodegeneration. After three years, Rachel’s work culminated in her honors thesis. In addition to this research, she worked in Dr. Greg Conradi-Smith’s computational biology lab to study neural networks involved in breathing. During this time, Rachel became excited about the power of using computational methods to address questions that are ethically or technically constrained in wet labs. As an undergraduate student, she spent her summers in Morocco and Palestine learning Arabic, teaching English, and interning at a women’s empowerment agency. These experiences heightened her desire to work with scientists from communities that are historically underrepresented in Western science to address issues that disproportionately affect those populations. In 2019, Rachel graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.S. in neuroscience and a minor (and dual passion) in Arabic language and literature.

Upon completing her undergraduate education, Rachel joined the vascular physiology lab of Dr. Hans Ackerman as a post-baccalaureate fellow at the Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research at the NIH. Throughout her two years in the lab, Rachel engaged in a diverse set of research projects using a wide variety of methodologies, ranging from time-resolved fluorescence and immunological techniques at the bench to transcriptomic and time series signal analyses on the computer. During the 2020 pandemic, she contributed to her lab’s COVID-19 research project. With Dr. Ackerman’s support, her work resulted in several first- and co-authored publications, as well as numerous posters and invited talks. During this time, Rachel also earned a certificate in data science through Johns Hopkins University.

As an NIH-Cambridge Scholar, Rachel plans to use transcriptomics and neuroimaging to study the role of early life stress and trauma in increasing vulnerability to psychiatric disorders in adulthood. After graduation, she hopes to focus her research on the psychiatric impact of the chronic trauma experienced by oppressed peoples. Outside of lab, Rachel is a competitive ultramarathon runner who enjoys lifting, being outdoors, and spending time with dogs.

I grew up on a wildflower meadow in the Rocky Mountains above Boulder, Colorado. My first involvement in research was as an assistant in the Behavioral Neuroendocrinology Lab where I helped to identify a novel anti-inflammatory therapy for shift workers. This inspired me to intern in the Harvard Macklis Lab as an Amgen scholar, where I worked with cortical and spinal organoids while modeling the formation of human neural circuitry during development. The culmination of these unique experiences allowed me to develop a passion for both neuroimmunology and the utilization of organoid models, leading me to join the CU Center for Alzheimer’s and Cognition and conduct my independent research project on the generation of microglia-containing cerebral organoids as models of Down syndrome-associated Alzheimer’s disease. As an OxCam scholar, I will be collaborating with Dr. Reich at the NINDS and Dr. Rowitch at the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute on a project that will utilize organoids and other stem cell-based models to illuminate the cellular mechanisms driving Multiple Sclerosis pathology and aid in the identification of therapeutic targets. My overarching goal is to become a physician-scientist and improve the quality and length of life for patients with neurological disorders through my contributions to both research and clinical care.

Sahba graduated summa cum laude from the University of Tennessee in 2016, with a BA in neuroscience. She pursued her first research experience through the NIH Summer Internship Program, during which she studied the innate immune response in multiple sclerosis. As an Amgen Scholar, Sahba spent the next summer working on a novel therapy for Alzheimer’s disease in the laboratory of Dr. Frank Longo at Stanford University. Intrigued by the possibility of uncovering targets for early intervention, she then continued this line of work at the Cajal Institute in Spain for a semester. At UT, she also spent three years in the Cooper Lab, completing and defending an honors thesis on brain and behavioral adaptations throughout the lifespan. Her undergraduate research received awards at numerous scientific conferences and was published in Physiology and Behavior and Behavioral Neuroscience. She also received the Chancellor’s Extraordinary Professional Promise Award and was named Class of 2016 Torchbearer in recognition of her academic achievements and contributions to the university and local community.

After graduating, Sahba studied Alzheimer's disease as an IRTA Fellow in Dr. Madhav Thambisetty’s group at the NIH National Institute on Aging. This year-long fellowship culminated in four publications, including two as first author. With a growing interest in population-based research on dementia, Sahba was then awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue an MPhil in epidemiology at the University of Cambridge. Her MPhil dissertation demonstrated a causal, genetic link between Alzheimer’s disease and cancer and was published in Scientific Reports.

Sahba joined the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine MSTP in 2018 and has since completed the first two years of medical school. During this time, she also served on the Alzheimer’s Congressional Team to advocate for patient-centered legislation and increased research funding from the federal government. As an NIH-Oxford student, Sahba plans to leverage insights from large-scale, epidemiological studies to guide basic science investigations into the pre-symptomatic stages of neurodegenerative disorders. Ultimately, she hopes to pursue a career as a physician-scientist dedicated to reimagining care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Sam completed his B.A. at Washington University in St. Louis where he graduated valedictorian with majors in Biology, Neuroscience, and Children's Studies. He spent three years researching the effects of socioeconomic status on childhood brain development as part of the Human Connectome Project, the Cognitive Control & Psychopathology Lab, and the Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry under the mentorship of Professor Deanna Barch. Outside the lab, he founded the region's first Special Olympics program, where he became interested in the biological underpinnings of the neurodevelopmental disorders in the children he coached. He also served as President of Synapse Neuroscience Organization, working with inner city schools to promote STEM education. 

As both a Gates Cambridge Scholar and NIH OxCam Scholar, he will complete his PhD in the MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. The goal of this research is to better understand the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying childhood neurodevelopmental disorders, such as SYT1-related Baker-Gordon syndrome under the mentorship of Dr. Kate Baker (Cambridge) and Dr. Chris McBain (NICHD). When note in the lab, he can be found on the 'football' field or playing his guitar alongside the River Cam.

After completing his PhD, Sam plans to return to the U.S. for medical school. His long-term goal is to become a physician-scientist with a focus on pediatric neuroscience, seeking international dialogue and research collaboration in bettering the lives of children with neurodevelopmental challenges.

Samantha is a graduate of the Macaulay Honors Program at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where she received a degree with a double major in Physics and Studio Art, and a minor in Mathematics. During her undergraduate career, Samantha was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa International Academic Honor Society, received the Gillet Memorial Prize for excellence in Physics, the John P. McNulty Research Award for Leadership in Math and Science, and the Toulmin Healthcare Merit Scholarship, which supported her work in Biophotonics. Samantha believes that in order to problem-solve, it is helpful to call upon influences from many different fields. In addition to being a scientific thinker, she is an artist, which gives her an added appreciation for the beauty of mathematics and characteristic patterns of disease in image processing and 3D modeling. Her research has focused on developing computational and optical tools to guide medical diagnostics. Samantha spent four years as a research assistant at The Rockefeller University analyzing microscopic properties of tissue, applying feature engineering and machine learning techniques to characterize disease patterns for quantifiable metrics, and developing 3D-bioprinting assays. At Hunter’s Biomedical Photonics lab, Samantha spearheaded a project to extract diagnostic value from differences in cancer fractal geometric parameters. She applied these image processing and laser physics techniques as a part of the Harvard-MIT Wellman Center for Photomedicine, where she investigated the biocompatibility of integrating intracellular micro-resonators into a spheroid cancer model and developed a quantitative approach to track and tag these laser particles. As an NIH OxCam Scholar, in partnership with the NIBIB at the NIH and the Department of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University, Samantha will utilize the formalism of mathematics, mechanobiology, and quantum mechanics to uncover emergent geometrical properties that arise from the unique spatial distribution and collective migration of organotypic cells. Upon graduation hopes to pursue an academic research career and become a professor at the university level.

Samika Kumar graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2017 as a Regents' and Chancellor's Scholar with a degree in Cognitive Science. Her interest in sleep research began in high school when she interned at Dr. Seiji Nishino's lab at Stanford University to study the practicality of using the piezoelectric system to detect cataplexy-like behavior in mice. In her undergrad, she examined the effects of regional GABA on the auditory resting-state network at Dr. Fumiko Hoeft's lab at the University of California, San Francisco, and she studied how pharmacological manipulations of sleep influence emotion regulation at Dr. Sophie Schwartz's lab at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. After graduation, Samika joined Dr. Matthew Walker's lab in Berkeley, where she explored the potential of transcranial electrical brain stimulation to enhance sleep quality.

In her doctoral work, Samika aims to investigate how specific memories are processed during sleep and other states of consciousness, and she intends to extend this work into clinical applications, as well as mental health awareness and advocacy, in the future.

Through her studies and research experiences, Sara has used computational techniques to understand phenomena from the nano-scale all the way to the population level. Sara first discovered her passion for computational approaches during her undergraduate studies in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She completed her honors research project at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center where she used computational modelling to investigate the relationship between the neuromuscular junction structure and function. Her passion for quantitative approaches led her to pursue an MPhil in Advanced Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge where she used metabolic modeling to find novel drug targets against the pathogen Clostridium difficile. She subsequently joined the Khademhosseini lab where she was able to combine experimental and computational techniques to understand the effect of a nanoparticle formulation on mesenchymal stem cell differentiation. During her Master’s in International Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford, she used computational modeling to assess the impact of a public health intervention. She is currently pursuing an MD/PhD at the University of Chicago and the NIH where she will use computational approaches to better understand the skin microbiome.

Sean graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2016 with a B.S. in Biology. During his time at MIT, he spent 4 years in the lab of Rudolf Jaenisch, participating in projects involving neurological disease modeling. Over the course of his undergraduate career, the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing revolution started and his main project became developing a system to create double strand breaks in mitochondrial DNA in order to create new tools for the greater scientific community to study mitochondrial biology.

After graduating, Sean went to work at CRISPR Therapeutics for a year. At CRISPR, he was a Research Associate in Hematology, and his team focused on making cures for Beta Thalassemia and Sickle Cell Disease. The work that he did at CRISPR Therapeutics is now in clinical trials in the US and Europe. Sean then moved on to start his MD/PhD at the Boston University School of Medicine. His love for cancer biology, which he found in a class he took his senior year of college based on the famous Hanahan and Weinberg review “The Hallmarks of Cancer,” led him to pursue his introduction to clinical medicine course in an oncology clinic. The educational experience in class combined with his clinical experience with patients opened his eyes to the complexities of cancer treatment and how much there still was to know about emerging hallmarks of cancer.

With this in mind, Sean chose to do his PhD in the field of Cancer Biology, and decided to join the labs of Louis Staudt at the NCI and Daniel Hodson at the University of Cambridge. In the Staudt and Hodson labs, Sean will work on aspects of Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma. As a future physician scientist, Sean hopes to bring his love for patient care and research together to create cures for serious diseases.

Shreya graduated from the University of Virginia with degrees in Cognitive Science and Public Policy & Leadership. Here, she sought out ways to combine her background in molecular biology research and interests in medicine with her studies of computer science and public policy. She worked as a teaching assistant for organic chemistry courses and served as a Research Assistant at the interdisciplinary Institute for Law, Psychiatry, & Public Policy. She also worked at Microsoft Research for two summers as an undergraduate intern and then researcher in the Adaptive Systems & Interaction group on several projects and papers related to user experience and human-AI collaborations in healthcare.

After graduating, she worked on natural language processing algorithms for clinical documents as a postbac research fellow in a joint collaboration with Dr. Frank Maldarelli at the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Govind Bhagavatheeshwaran at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

In the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program, she will work with Dr. Andra Krauze in the Radiation Oncology Branch at the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Jat Singh in the Compliant and Accountable Systems group in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge. Through this collaboration, she seeks to explore and improve issues of fairness and transparency related to machine learning analysis of clinical oncology data.

Sinibaldo was born and raised in Venezuela. He pursued his college studies in the US at North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota. There, he double majored in Zoology and Biotechnology. During his undergraduate studies, he worked with Dr. Peggy Biga to study teleost fish growth paradigms (determinate vs. indeterminate). He also pursued a summer internship at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, under the mentorship of Drs. David Breault and Diana Carlone, characterizing how mTert-expressing cell populations in bone are affected during aging.

After graduating from college, he joined Dr. Virginia Shapiro's laboratory at the Mayo Clinic as a Research Assistant to study the development and activation of T cells. He then joined the Mayo Clinic's Post-Baccalaureate Research Program under the mentorship of Drs. Atta Behfar and Andre Terzic, optimizing a stem cell platform using human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells and microencapsulated-modified-messenger RNA to improve remodeling and function in myocardial ischemic injury. 

Sinibaldo began his medical degree at the University of Minnesota in 2020. After completing his first preclinical training, he joined the University of Oxford to pursue his DPhil. He is mentored by Dr. Michael Sack (NHLBI), Dr. Laura Coates (Oxford), and Dr. Alexander Clarke (Oxford). His project will investigate changes in metabolism and the immune system of patients with psoriasis. After completing his DPhil, Sini will complete his medical training at the University of Minnesota and aims to join a Physician Scientist Training Program during residency.

As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, Sooraj performed computational biology research under the supervision of Professor Cameron Mura. His research in Professor Mura’s group involved using molecular dynamics simulations to gain a better understanding of the kinetics of protein-RNA binding interactions in bacterial RNA chaperones. He also conducted research at the NIDDK with Dr. Caroline Philpott, where he analyzed the interaction dynamics of two cytosolic mammalian iron chaperones using immunoprecipitation assays and molecular docking. Upon graduation, Sooraj joined the laboratory of Dr. Gregoire Altan-Bonnet at the NCI as an NIH post baccalaureate fellow, where his project focused on deconvolving the effects of the quality (TCR binding affinity) and quantity (surface density) of an antigen on T cell activation. During the course of this research project, Sooraj developed and optimized a robotic platform and data processing pipeline to allow for high time resolution measurements of many aspects of T cell activation dynamics. In his doctoral research project, he aims to combine these robotics-based temporal measurements with microscopy-based spatial measurements of immune cell activation to gain a holistic understanding of how T cell activation is governed by antigen quality. His eventual goal is to apply these techniques to analyze CAR-T cell activation to produce more robust pre-clinical metrics for assessing immunotherapy efficacy.

Stanley graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2020 with a B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology. During his time there, he was part of the Experimental Molecular Imaging Laboratory, where he focused on the development and characterization of a nanoparticle-based imaging agent targeted at the receptor for advanced glycation end-products (RAGE). His interests in oncology, imaging, and molecular theranostics led him to pursue a fellowship at the National Cancer Institute to focus on developing new vehicles for early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. As part of the laboratory of molecular radiotherapy, he focused on designing, synthesizing, and characterizing novel single-domain antibody (nanobody) and peptide-based imaging probes for liver cancer.

As a student in the OxCam program, Stanley will continue his work on developing diagnostic and therapeutic agents for cancer, exploring more closely the radiobiological pathways activated, manipulating them to maximize therapeutic efficacy, and identifying opportunities for synergy.

Stephanie graduated cum laude from the University of Rhode Island (URI) in 2020 with a degree in cell and molecular biology and minor in chemistry. While at URI she worked under Dr. Marta Gomez-Chiarri for two years where she was introduced to the field of aquatic pathology and learned to utilize quantitative microbiology and aquatic husbandry to develop strategies to protect marine life and aquaculture systems from infectious diseases. Her senior year she was awarded an Undergraduate Research and Innovation(URI2) grant to understand the pathogenic relationship between climatic variation and the emergence of a bacterial isolate causing mortality in wild fin-fish populations from the Galapagos.

Post-graduation, she desired further experiences understanding the molecular details of microbial pathogenesis and joined the laboratory of Dr. Vanessa Hirsch at the NIH as a postbaccalaureate fellow. Alongside mentor, Dr. Fadila Bouamr, she conducted experiments elucidating mechanisms of the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT), host cell machinery hijacked by most human RNA viruses, to address questions regarding transmission of HIV-1 virions. In addition, she worked on a project developing an oral-based vaccine capable of inducing neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in collaboration with Dr. Michael Grigg and his lab.

Throughout her two years as a postbaccalaureate fellow, Stephanie became fascinated with the intrinsic cellular barriers to viral infection studying the role of antiviral restriction factor, TRIM5alpha, and its implications in pathogenesis of retroviruses as well as flaviviruses in an on-going collaboration with Dr. Sonja Best. She will continue characterizing novel restrictive functions of TRIM5alpha as an NIH-Oxford Scholar which she hopes may strengthen insights into viral pathogenesis and the development of antiviral therapies. Working alongside Oxford mentor, Dr. Peijun Zhang, she hopes to learn and harness the powerful technologies of high-resolution imagining for a firm structure-function understanding of TRIM5alpha recognition mechanisms.

Believing that the fight against the global burden of pathogens relies on an understanding of their basic biology, Stephanie plans to continue expanding her arsenal of technical skills and knowledge to study host-virus interactions. She hopes her efforts will contribute to the development of preventative measures and treatments.

Stephanie’s research experiences have been a blend of microbiology and virology. While in the lab of Dr. Ann Stevens at Virginia Tech, she worked to characterize the unique genome and metabolic capabilities of an emerging bacterial strain of Vibrio parahaemolyticus that causes Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS) in shrimp which has significant impacts on the aquaculture industry where it’s endemic. Additional to her academic research experience, Stephanie had the opportunity to conduct research with BEI Resources at American Type Culture Collection located in Manassas, VA to develop a safe and immunogenic Virus-Like Particle (VLP)-based vaccine against Zika virus as a part of their internship program. Upon graduating from Virginia Tech in 2017, Stephanie remained on campus as lab technician in the lab of Dr. Jonathan Auguste to study and develop vaccines for variety of vector-borne viruses such as Mayaro, Chikungunya, and Zika viruses. Since 2018, Stephanie has been a member of the Viral Pathogenesis and Evolution Section run by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger at the National Institutes of Health studying influenza and SARS-CoV-2. Stephanie’s research uses a combination of molecular virology, animal models, and bioinformatics to characterize the hemagglutinin (HA) pathogenicity of the 1918 Pandemic and Classical Swine influenza A viruses. Using the data from this study, the lab aims to uncover answers behind the virulence of the 1918 influenza virus. In her years of research, she has generated four publications, of which she has one first authorship. Stephanie has been recognized by Virginia Tech’s Department of Biological Sciences for her research efforts and was inducted into the university’s Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Sigma chapters for being a dedicated and well-rounded researcher in the biological sciences.

Stephanie plans to follow her passion for emerging and re-emerging viral diseases upon graduation and seek out research opportunities to study their evolution and pathogenesis. She hopes that her future endeavors could be useful in developing better preventative measures, treatments, and overall lessen the burden of emerging viral diseases on global health.

Stephen Gadomski, a native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, graduated from the University of Scranton with a B.S. in Exercise Science.  As an undergraduate, Stephen examined the ability of L-citrulline and watermelon juice to improve exercise performance in college-aged subjects with Dr. Paul Cutrufello.  Continuing work with human subjects during a summer research fellowship, Stephen began to assess range of motion and postural adaptations in powerlifters. 

After graduation, Stephen joined the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Keller at the National Cancer Institute and began to study the intrinsic and extrinsic regulation of hematopoietic stem cell quiescence as an NIH Postbaccalaureate Fellow.  This research lead him to pursue an MD/PhD degree at the Medical University of South Carolina with the goal of studying stem cell and regenerative mechanisms that can be used to understand and treat human disease.

As an NIH-Gates Cambridge Scholar, Stephen plans to study the mechanisms that regulate skeletal stem cell differentiation into chondrocytes and osteoblasts in hopes to gain insight on the pathophysiology and treatment of skeletal disease.  Outside of the lab, Stephen plans to compete in the sport of powerlifting and to partner with healthcare teams to provide medical services to the poor and underserved.

Taylor first realized she was interested in a career in research while volunteering at a veterinary hospital in high school. Although the experience was intended to reinforce her desire to be a veterinarian, she found the diagnostic tests and bench work to be the most intriguing parts of the job, pushing her to pursue a degree in Microbiology from Colorado State University (CSU). 

Following a brief summer internship at AstraZeneca, Taylor became captivated by the field of Immunology and joined the lab of Dr. Mark Zabel in the Prion Research Center at CSU. There, she studied the function of a complement regulatory protein, factor H, in prion pathogenesis and helped identify factor H as a novel soluble prion receptor that may influence prion strain selection. 

After graduating magna cum laude from CSU in 2015, Taylor joined the Post-baccalaureate program at the NIH under the mentorship of Dr. Richard Siegel of NIAMS. In the Siegel lab, she investigated the role of a Tumor Necrosis Factor superfamily receptor, DR3, and its ligand, TL1A, in multiple models of autoimmune disease. While at the NIH, she became fascinated by the field of Microbiome research. As an NIH-Oxford scholar, Taylor will study non-classical immune responses to the microbiome in steady state and inflammation.  

Teddy graduated with University and College honors from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. Early in his undergraduate studies, Teddy became interested in applying engineering principles to brain research. To broaden his exposure and develop an interdisciplinary skill set before graduate school, Teddy sought research experiences in disparate areas of brain research.

Teddy eventually completed research projects in clinical psychology (Prof. Theodore Cooper, University of Texas at El Paso; Prof. Kasey Creswell, CMU), neurobiology (Dr. Kausik Si, Stowers Institute for Medical Research), neural engineering (Prof. Pulkit Grover, CMU), and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (Dr. Peter Basser, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development). Project topics ranged from psychographics in Hispanic smokers to prion-like proteins in the Drosophila brain. Of the fields he had gained exposure to, Teddy found diffusion-weighted MRI to be the most compelling. The central idea of diffusion-based imaging, that tissue features can be noninvasively probed by looking at the movement of water in and around the tissue, resonated with him. Teddy's diverse technical background and burgeoning passion for the field enabled success; during his summer internship in Dr. Basser's lab, Teddy completed a project on rapid diffusion exchange imaging that resulted in a first-author publication. For his potential in research and continued commitment to teaching, Teddy was awarded a 2019 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (award declined).

Teddy is now returning to Dr. Basser's group as an NIH-Oxford scholar and aims to continue developing novel diffusion MR image acquisition and analysis methods for neurological applications. Interested also in the increasingly data-driven insights in medical imaging, Teddy will be co-mentored by Prof. Karla Miller of Oxford's Wellcome Center for Integrative Neuroimaging, whose group plays a central role in the ongoing, 100,000 subject UK Biobank project. 

Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, I immigrated to the United States at the age of thirteen. Growing up, I was passionate about wanting to change the healthcare system in my local community. My passion and my strong interests in STEM, led me to pursue Biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), gaining first-hand exposure to what research in STEM meant.

As part of the Presidential Awards Program STEM Initiative program at UIC, I was able to explore different research areas. During my freshman and sophomore years, I studied the effect of greenhouse gases in the Arctic, analyzing soil and gas samples. The summer after my sophomore year, I had the privilege of participating in a 10-week research program at the University of Delaware. Under the supervision of Dr. Liyun Wang, I studied the impacts of the mechanosensitive ion channels, piezo 1 and 2, in osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. The immunolabeling, hands on techniques, and skill-sets I acquired during the 10-week program propelled me into similar research labs at my own institution. Thus, for my Honors capstone at UIC, I studied the role of the gene Tbx2 in pericytes and its relation to loss of vision in Diabetic Retinopathy, under the supervision of Dr. Henar Cuervo in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics.

These research experiences took my viewpoints of STEM and how I can better the healthcare system to another level. I realized I can make impactful contributions to the healthcare system through research. So, in my last semester of undergraduate studies, I applied for a post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). I decided that my fellowship had to be in the cancer field. This is a disease that not only personally affected me and my family, but made me passionate about STEM to begin with. Thus, under the supervision of Dr. Christine Alewine at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), I studied pancreatic cancer. Specifically, I studied the characteristics of the GPI-anchored protein mesothelin and its role in an immunocompetent mouse model. I also contributed to the study of soluble mesothelin and how it potentially acts as a signaling molecule and promote tumorigenicity.

As a NIH-Scholar, I’ll be furthering my studies in cancer research at the NCI and the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Dr. Xin W. Wang and Dr. Daniel Muñoz-Espin, respectively. My thesis will focus on studying liver and lung cancer, with goals to develop preclinical models to study tumor senescence and metastasis for better early detection and diagnosis of cancer.

Tung developed an interest in genomics in immunology as a 2016 NYU SURP student with Dr. Dan Littman and pursued experimental genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. As a research associate of Drs. Eric Lander and Jesse Engreitz, he investigated the noncoding genome in immune-mediated diseases. After witnessing the effects of COVID-19 on patientcare during medical school at UW-Madison, he became interested in how SARS-CoV-2 evolves, especially in immunocompromised hosts. His research at NIAID and University of Cambridge aims to infer SARS-CoV-2 genomic epidemiology and viral evolution at antibody epitopes. After completion of the PhD, he will return to the University of Wisconsin to complete his last year of medical training in 2027

I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I worked in the lab of Dr. Wenyan Mei studying the role of the RNA-binding protein, hnRNPI, in intestinal homeostasis. During my time as an undergraduate, I also completed two internships, one at the Mayo Clinic and the other at the NIDDK. At the Mayo Clinic, I worked under Dr. Richard Vile and worked to develop mouse models to study diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a rare and lethal form of pediatric brain cancer. At the NIDDK, I worked under Dr. Jurgen Wess, studying the role of beta-adrenergic receptors in adipose tissue. After graduating, I spent two years as a post-bac researcher in the lab of Dr. Helen Su (NIAID) , where I studied the genetic contributions of RIG-I receptors in anti-viral defense, specifically influenza and SARS-CoV-2.

As an MD/PhD student at Yale University partnered with the NIH OxCam program, I partnered with Dr. Akiko Iwasaki at Yale University in addition to Dr. Jelena Bezbradica (Oxford) and Dr. Helen Su to complete my thesis work. I am currently working on numerous projects, ranging from examining the differences in immune response in pregnant mothers to SARS-CoV-2 infection, to studying inborn errors of innate and adaptive immunity.

Will graduated summa cum laude from Bucknell University in 2021 with a B.S. in Neuroscience. He started developing neuroimaging methods in high school, examining large, publicly available autism fMRI datasets. During his first year at Bucknell, Will began training with Dr. Vanessa Troiani’s neuroimaging lab at the Geisinger-Bucknell Autism and Developmental Medicine Institute. Captivated by the potential of mathematics to advance brain mapping, he spent his four years with the lab creating tools to describe brain structure and function using graph theory and statistics. He focused on the orbitofrontal cortex, automating methods to help study how certain brain folding patterns confer risk for multiple psychiatric disorders. Continuing his study of autism spectrum disorders, he created a novel meta-analysis to evaluate the relationship between atypical brain function and symptoms.

Through several internships, Will gained further appreciation for how imaging methods can capture the intricacies of the brain. With Dr. Soohyun Lee at the NIMH, he helped automate large-scale calcium imaging of mouse neurons. With Dr. Lucina Uddin at the University of Miami, he led a large study of human salience network brain dynamics across the life span. With Dr. Jurgen Dukart at the Forschungszentrum Julich, he explored how drugs impact the correspondence between signals in simultaneously collected EEG and fMRI. His experiences led him to be awarded a Goldwater scholarship, to be offered an NSF graduate fellowship, and to publish three first-authored publications.

As an NIH Gates Cambridge scholar, he will work with Prof. Ed Bullmore at Cambridge and Dr. Armin Raznahan’s at the NIMH to explore relationships between brain networks and cortical folding. Will hopes to contribute to the growing field of precision medicine, advancing treatments for disorders based on markers in the brain.

Yasemin Cole was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina.  Her scientific curiosity was sparked in high school after her same-aged cousin was diagnosed with medulloblastoma. This experience motivated her to pursue clinical experiences and a research internship with Dr. Aziz Sancar’s circadian rhythms of DNA repair laboratory, at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine (UNC SOM), over multiple summers.

She subsequently studied biology and medical anthropology at UNC at Chapel Hill. Yasemin joined Dr. Anton Jetton’s lab at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences as an IRTA fellow with the Summer Internship Program. She worked with Dr. Gary ZeRuth over two summers to investigate Glis3 regulation and the role of Glis3 on the transdifferentiation of pancreatic exocrine cells as a therapeutic option for type I diabetes. She likewise flourished in the lab of Dr. Jeannette Cook, where her studies culminated in her senior honors thesis on the regulation of the cell cycle protein Cdt1 by phosphorylation. Her aforementioned research experiences were published in PLOS ONE and MBoC. Concurrent to her research work, she found a deep connection between scientific advancement and medical progress. This led her to design and teach a course offered to UNC undergraduates called “The Past, Present, and Future of Medicine,” which covered a range of topics from Fleming’s penicillin discovery to the human genome project. She was awarded a Student Undergraduate Teaching Award for her teaching excellence and creation of a dynamic learning environment.

After graduating in 2016 with Highest Distinction and Honors, she decided to follow her interest in personalized medicine by completing a Master of Science in Genomic Medicine at Imperial College London. With the Dean’s Master’s Scholarship, she completed foundational genomic coursework and joined the lab of Professor Anne Bowcock at the National Heart and Lung Institute. There, she completed her master’s thesis on the genomics of uveal melanoma tumorigenesis. The specific aims of her investigation were to evaluate the sequence of genomic events leading to tumor development utilizing Sanger sequencing and FISH. After studying phenotype aware approaches to whole-exome sequencing in the laboratory of Dr. Jonathan Berg at UNC SOM, she began her MD/PhD studies at the same institution with the long term goal of becoming a physician-scientist.

In total, her research experiences motivated her to study the genomic and molecular mechanisms of cancer with the goal of applying this knowledge into translational precision medicine diagnostics and therapeutics. After completing basic medical science coursework and multiple clinical electives, she is now working with Dr. Zhengping Zhuang (NCI) and Professor Eamonn Maher (Department of Medical Genetics). As an NIH Gates Cambridge Scholar, she plans to study the genomic and metabolic underpinnings of the neuroendocrine tumors paragangliomas, pheochromocytomas, and gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Outside of research, she is deeply committed to refugee health, genetics outreach, and mentorship.

Yasmin graduated summa cum laude from the University of Delaware with an Honors Bachelor of Science Degree in biology and neuroscience with a minor in biochemistry. Her passion for research comes from her love of biology and drive to help others. Yasmin’s first research experience was during the summer of 2017 at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children through the Nemours Summer Undergraduate Research Program. There she worked under the supervision of Dr. Zhengyu Ma to investigate whether tuning the binding affinity of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells could improve tumor targeting. This was done by creating 3 anti-human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) CAR constructs that varied in binding affinity using site-directed mutagenesis. Yasmin’s next summer was spent at the Fox Chase Cancer Center as a University of Delaware-Fox Chase Cancer Center research fellow. As a student of Dr. Erica Golemis, she examined the effects of anti-cancer drugs on primary cilia-associated platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRα) signaling using western blotting and immunofluorescence microscopy. The poster created from this work won her 1st place in the poster presentation competition during the Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciences at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2018. Yasmin also began working with Dr. Carlton Cooper, Dr. Randall Duncan, and Dr. Kenneth van Golen at the University of Delaware in September 2017 to explore the racial disparity in prostate cancer metastasis to bone. This led to a 3-year project, including a summer internship through the University of Delaware Summer Scholars Program, and resulted in the completion of a senior thesis on the effects of oxidative stress on human bone marrow endothelial cells and metastatic prostate cancer adhesion. These research experiences led her to become a 2019 Barry Goldwater Scholar and earn the University of Delaware Biological Sciences Academic Excellence and Halsey McPhee Awards. She is also a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.

Yasmin decided to take a gap year after graduating to pursue her interests in science advocacy and education. As a volunteer with the Colorectal Cancer Alliance, she helped prepare written reports and a poster on the unique challenges young-onset cancer patients face. She also did volunteer work with local organization, FAME Inc., to help provide resources and support for underrepresented K-12 students so they can pursue college STEM degrees. Yasmin found herself back at the University of Delaware as a teaching assistant for the university’s graduate-level cancer biology class. She also continued to work with Dr. Carlton Cooper and his collaborator at Delaware State University, Dr. Alberta Aryee, to evaluate the cytotoxic effects of Prunus africana extracts on prostate cancer. They plan to publish this work in August.

For her thesis work, Yasmin will be studying CAR T cell activity in response to varying metabolic tumor microenvironments in the context of medullary thyroid cancer. In addition to volunteering and teaching, Yasmin also enjoys baking, playing soccer and watching movies. After graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in academia where she can continue to conduct groundbreaking research, advocate for equality and science policy, and mentor the next generation of scientists.

Yifan graduated from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2014 with a B.S. in biology and psychology. He firstly developed an interest in science he shadowed in Dr. Stephen Ekker’s Lab at the Mayo Clinic. He worked on validating a transposon-based gene screening tool in zebrafish to study stress response. Yifan continued his research career throughout college at Dr. Craig Kent’s vascular surgery Lab studying restenosis. His effort resulted in the development of a novel perivascular sheath drug delivery system for restenosis patients, as well as the advancement in the understanding of TGF-Smad3-mediated pathogenesis in restenosis. He also worked at Dr. Paul Sondel’s immunotherapy Lab evaluating the efficacy of the cytokine-conjugated antibody therapy in pediatric neuroblastoma patients. After graduation, Yifan joined Dr. Karen Usdin’s Lab at the NIDDK as a postbac fellow studying the genetic pathogenesis process of Fragile X Syndrome (FXS). His work demonstrated a potential selective advantage of the FXS-patient-derived stem cells with methylated Fragile X Mental Retardation Gene 1, which could explain the transgenerational anticipation occurring in FXS families. Furthermore, he also developed a cost-effective semi-quantitative methylation assay that could be applied in prenatal genetic testing for FXS. He published these results in two first-author manuscripts. Most recently, Yifan completed a master’s degree in Immunology at the University of Oxford. he has been studying multiple sclerosis animal models and developing blood biomarkers using NMR-based metabolomics.  As a NIH OxCam scholar, Yifan plans to investigate haematopoiesis using single cell analysis platform at transcriptome and epigenome levels.  

Zoë first developed her interest in scientific research under the direction of Dr. Owen McCarty in Oregon Health and Sciences University’s Biomedical Engineering department. Her work focused on quantifying an ex vivo model of occlusive thrombus formation, which she presented at the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis (Amsterdam, 2013). As an undergraduate, Zoë conducted four years of research in Dr. Karen Guillemin’s lab in the University of Oregon’s Institute of Molecular Biology. She studied host-microbe interactions in the Drosophila midgut, which formed the basis for her Honors Thesis. After graduating, Zoë joined Dr. Beth Kozel’s Vascular and Matrix Genetics lab at the NIH (NHLBI). She studied patients with atypical deletions of Williams Syndrome and characterized their clinical features.

Zoë will complete her DPhil training under the mentorship of Dr. Chris Hourigan (NIH) and Prof. Chris O’Callaghan (Oxford). Her project will probe graft-versus- leukemia effects found in AML patients that undergo allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation, with the ultimate goal of improving treatment outcomes for AML patients.