Hopkins BME student awarded AHA predoctoral fellowship

Chen Zhao, a biomedical engineering Ph.D. candidate at Johns Hopkins University, has been awarded a two-year American Heart Association predoctoral fellowship, which provides funding to students pursuing research related to cardiovascular function and disease.

Working in the lab of Aleksander Popel, professor of biomedical engineering, Zhao is building multi-scale computational models to understand the role of macrophages, a type of white blood cell, in the regulation of blood vessel formation and inflammation in peripheral arterial disease (PAD). He plans to use these models to identify novel therapies with the potential to improve blood circulation in patients with PAD.

“This is an exciting acknowledgement of my research in translational systems biology,” said Zhao. “The application and writing process is really a valuable training experience for me as a student and young investigator.”