Research

Tiwary Lab, University of Maryland, Dr. Pratyush Tiwary (Undergraduate Researcher)

Undergraduate researcher leading a phage modeling project in the Tiwary Lab, part of the Maryland Initiative Against Superbugs.

University of Maryland, Dr. Joshua Shifrinson

Conducting grand strategy research on US, Russia, and China foreign policy with Dr. Joshua Shifrinson.

Spatial Biology Lab, University of Maryland, Dr. Alex Xu (Undergraduate Researcher)

Built PhysiCell scripting infrastructure on the Zaratan HPC cluster and replicated Heiland et al. (18 runs, 8 of 9 checkpoints within tolerance). Designed multi-cell-type computational domains (cancer, cancer-immune, and immune-only clusters) and wrote Python scripts to compute cell-type densities and distance-based metrics from simulation output. Implemented trackable cell agents to quantify distance to defined regions, regional residence times, and local cell density over time, ran parameter sweeps of 100 to 1,000 parallel simulations varying cell motility speed and adhesion strength, aggregated results across runs for model calibration, and implemented a spatial niche calculation pipeline.

Jay Lab, University of Maryland, Dr. Steven Jay (Undergraduate Researcher)

Designed and executed experiments to fuse bacterial and mammalian extracellular vesicles into a hybrid delivery vehicle optimized to cross intestinal fluid barriers. Evaluated drug loading capacity and release kinetics of engineered nanocarriers across two parallel projects on payload delivery and biocompatibility. Scaled vesicle production through cell transfection and bioreactor maintenance under sterile mammalian cell culture, and used Western blot, ELISA, RT-PCR, and qPCR to assess protein and gene expression of the vesicle constructs.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Department of Anesthesia (Clinical Research Intern)

Managed data entry and patient health record verification across multiple active clinical studies using EPIC and REDCap. Supported data collection for the SCOPE and EMERGE trials, with exposure to ICU and OR research environments. Observed surgical procedures alongside attending anesthesiologists and collaborated with research fellows on perioperative data workflows.