Two students win AHA predoctoral fellowships

Two BME graduate students have been awarded highly competitive American Heart Association (AHA) predoctoral fellowships. Kshitiz Gupta of Dr. Andre Levchenko’s lab and Jason Bayer working in Dr. Natalia Trayanova’s lab were among a select group of awardees in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Bayer has a B.S. in Bioengineering from Syracuse University and an M.S. in Pharmacology from the State University of New York, Syracuse. Bayer’s research aims to improve understanding of the mechanisms underlying T-wave alternans, a clinical index for predicting lethal ventricular arrhythmias, in the ECG of patients with ventricular systolic heart failure and thus improve arrhythmia prevention in patients susceptible to lethal ventricular arrhythmias.

Gupta is in the 5th year of a PhD program in BME. He received his B.Tech. from IIT Bombay. Gupta’s work will examine pro-survival signaling pathways in Cardiosphere Derived Cells (CDCs) and combine optimal survival strategies with engineered niches that mimic cardio-specific topography in vitro to devise methods to enhance CDC survival engraftment and differentiation in vivo.