As part of their Strategic Plan Advisory Group (GT-SPAG) Award, the Quantitative Biosciences Ph.D. program announced a call for spring 2019 GRA funding to support QBioS student research that spans students’ dissertation research and interdisciplinary collaboration with a faculty member from the College of Engineering or College of Computing.  The intent is to broaden the preparation for graduate trainees, enhance opportunities for catalyzing new interdisciplinary research, and facilitate increased cross-College collaborations.

We are pleased to announce the student winners of these GRA funds:

• Shlomi Cohen
• Nolan English
• Alexander Bo Lee
• Seyed Alireza Zamani-Dahaj

Shlomi Cohen is a 3rd year QBioS student from the School of Physics, who is co-advised by Professor Jennifer Curtis (School of Physics) and Professor Shuyi Nie (School of Biological Sciences).  Shlomi will be collaborating with Professor Denis Tsygankov from Biomedical Engineering.  His research project is entitled, “Competitive binding in the control of cell polarity during neural crest migration.” 

Nolan English is a 3rd year QBioS student in the School of Biological Sciences.  His primary research advisor is Professor Matthew Torres, also in Biological Sciences.  His proposal, “From Sequence to Significance: Machine learning for functional prioritization of Post Translational Modifications,” is a collaboration with Professor Christopher Rozell from Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Alexander Bo Lee, a 3rd year QBioS student in the School of Biological Sciences, will be studying, “The Fluid Dynamics of Underwater Sniffing.”  Bo’s primary research advisor is Professor David Hu (Biological Sciences/Mechanical Engineering) and they will be collaborating with Professor Alexander Alexeev from Mechanical Engineering.

Finally, Seyed Alireza Zamani-Dahaj, a 3rd year QBioS student from home School of Physics, has proposed a project called, “Evolution of macroscopic size in nascent multicellular organisms.”  Ali is primarily advised by Professor Peter Yunker from the School of Physics joint with Professor Will Ratcliff in Biological Sciences.  His collaborator for this project is Professor Eva Dyer from the School of Biomedical Engineering.

The QBioS SPAG selection committee comprised Joshua S. Weitz (Chair, Biol Sci), Hang Lu (ChBE), Patrick McGrath (Biol Sci), Haesun Park (CSE), Peng Qiu (BME), and Soojin Yi (Biol Sci).