Joe is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Venkatesh Murthy’s laboratory in the Department of Molecular & Cellular biology at Harvard University. His research interests involve understanding the mechanisms by which environmental sensory information are encoded by the central nervous system. Toward this, he is working on two projects. First, he is using optical-based methods to understand how olfactory … Read More

Renee is a PhD candidate at Northeastern University studying population health. She focuses on environmental health in vulnerable populations, analyzing topics ranging from air pollution to the gut microbiome. She is an Superfund Research Program (SRP) trainee and has done a fellowship in microbiome analysis at the Craig Venter Research Center in La Jolla, as well as been awarded the … Read More

Vivekanand Pandey Vimal is a graduate student in neuroscience at the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Lab, where he studies the role of gravitational cues on human balance control. Before coming to Brandeis, he taught physics at Waltham High School for six years and spent one year in India as a consultant to a NGO making documentaries and writing grants ranging … Read More

Kamilya Tazhibayeva is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Economics at MIT. Her areas of specialization are economic development, with a focus on human capital and agricultural development, and applied microeconomics. Kamilya’s current research, in collaboration with MIT Professor Robert M. Townsend, is on the effects of weather shocks and climate change on vulnerable communities in developing countries, the … Read More

Mao Taketani is a postdoctoral researcher mentored by Christopher Voigt in the Synthetic Biology Center at MIT. She has been fascinated by the biology of microbe-to-host interactions, especially in the context of symbiosis in the human gastrointestinal tract. Now as a postdoc, she is interested in creating synthetic, microbe-to-host interactions by genetically engineering symbiotic bacteria to sense, compute and respond, … Read More

Zhenghan Qi is a cognitive neuroscientist dedicated to understand the mechanisms of language dysfunction in various neurodevelopmental disorders and to apply her research to the development of therapeutic intervention. After receiving her MD from Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University, Zhenghan pursued her PhD in Neuroscience from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, focusing on the cognitive neuroscience of typical language learning. … Read More

Wen Jie Ong is a fourth year PhD candidate in organic chemistry at MIT under the supervision of Professor Timothy Swager. His research focuses on the development of new synthetic methodology and the design and synthesis of novel organic materials for heavy metals sensing and removal in water. Before coming to MIT, he spent a year at the Institute of … Read More

Miyabe, C.Y. is a PhD candidate in Drug Discovery under the mentorship of Dr. Alexandros Makriyannis at Northeastern University. She began researching enzymes as pharmaceutical targets at the University of California, Davis and expanded this focus in her thesis work for her PhD. Miyabe aims to develop a new method for designing active prodrugs that bind to more than one … Read More

Hiruy Meharena received his PhD in biomedical sciences from the University of California, San Diego in 2015. His research in graduate school focused on understanding the intramolecular regulation of Eukaryotic Protein Kinases under the mentorship of Dr. Susan Taylor. His research utilized biochemical, biophysical, structural and computational approaches to decipher the mechanics governing the inactive state as well as the … Read More