Eleven biomedical engineering undergraduates from Johns Hopkins University received the Provost Undergraduate Research Award (PURA) to help fund their research projects over the coming year.
Through this award, undergraduates have the opportunity to conduct independent research, design, entrepreneurship, scholarly, and creative projects with the help of a $3,000 fellowship. Students will present their projects at DREAMS, the annual Johns Hopkins celebration of undergraduate research held in the spring.
This year’s recipients from BME include:
Dante Basile ’22
“Simulation Guidance of Ablation Therapy for Persistent Atrial Fibrillation”
Mentor: Rheeda Ali, assistant research scientist in ADVANCE, WSE
Raphi (Raphael) Chernoff ’22
“Improving Synaptic Connection in Retinal Organoid Transplants”
Mentor: Robert Johnston, associate professor of biology, KSAS
Julia Costacurta ’20
“Restoring Tactile Feedback in Human-Prosthetic Systems Using Optimal Feedback Control Theory”
Mentor: Sri Sarma, associate professor of biomedical engineering, WSE
Kirby Leo ’20
“Melanin Binding – Cell Penetrating Peptides for Ocular Drug Delivery”
Mentor: Laura Ensign-Hodges, associate professor of nanomedicine, SoM
Carolyn Marar ’20
“Effects of the Tissue Microenvironment on the Spread of Cancer Through Extracellular Vesicles”
Mentor: Denis Wirtz, Theophilus Halley Smoot Professor of chemical & biomolecular engineering, WSE
Gavin Mischler ’20
“SpikeFRinder: A Finite Rate of Innovation Approach to Spike Inference”
Mentor: Benjamin Bejar Haro, assistant research professor of biomedical engineering, WSE
Liza Naydanova ’22
“Objective Intraoperative Evaluation of Motor symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease Using a Dual System of LEAP Motion Sensors”
Mentor: Yousef Salimpour, instructor of neurological surgery, SoM
Kisha Patel ’20
“Tumor-Derived Antigen-Presenting Cells as a Novel Immunotherapy Treatment Against Melanoma”
Mentor: Jordan Green, professor of biomedical engineering, SoM
Pranav Reddy ’21
“Single Molecule Studies of Repeat Associated Non-AUG Translation in Huntington’s Disease”
Mentor: Bin Wu, assistant professor of biophysics and biophysical chemistry, SoM
Maggie Wang ’21
“High Resolution Thickness Maps of the Hippocampus”
Mentor: Michael Miller, Bessie Darling Massey Professor and director of biomedical engineering, WSE
Nicholas Zhang ’21
“Predicting the Biomechanical Properties of 3D-Printed Mid-Facial Bone Scaffolds”
Mentor: Warren Grayson, associate professor of biomedical engineering, SoM