Carnegie Mellon University

Friday, August 22, 2014

2014 New Students

Welcome, New Students!

The Department of Biological Sciences welcomes all of its new graduate and undergraduate students for the first day of class on August 25.

This year, 14 Ph.D. students, Daniel Ackerman, Surya Aggarwal, Stephanie Biedka, Mengshen Chen, Rolando Cuevas, Ian Fucci, Jian Ming Khor, Hannah Kim, Amber Lucas, Alan Shteyman, Elena Shuvaeva, Meiqi Wang, Nathaniel Williams, and Andrew Wolff begin their studies. Our incoming Ph.D. students are joining us after completing degrees at several local universities, including Grove City College and CMU, major universities across the country, such as Texas State University and Evergreen State College, and universities from all around the world, including Peking University, Monash University, and Catholic University of Chile. Over the next few weeks, these students will begin the first of three lab rotations, where they learn more about the department's faculty and research. After completing their lab rotations and core courses, the new students will select a research advisor, marking the beginning of their doctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University.

Additionally, 17 M.S. in Computational Biology students, Apurva Anand, Faisal Baqai, Zhishen Cao, Ting Wei Chang, Yang Choo, Vrushali Fangal, Ge Huang, Linglin Huan, Xinran Li, Bangrui Liu, Adham Mandour, Adam Scarlat, Qian Wan, Yankun Xi, Chensu Xie, Tinting Xu, and Yifan Xue are joining the department. Of the incoming students, five are joining the program to complete their second master’s degree. They are coming from around the globe, having previously attending universities in Helsinki, Cairo, Hyderabad, Tel Aviv, Bejing, and Chengdu, among others. Their previous degrees are in computer science, biology, applied mathematics, biotechnology, neuroscience, biochemistry, electrical engineering, systems biology, and other related fields.

Sixty-one sophomores have also declared a primary major in biological sciences, computational biology, or the unified major of biology and psychology. In addition to the core Biology courses, undergraduate students take a variety of electives in the areas of genetics and molecular biology, biochemistry and biophysics, cell and developmental biology, neuroscience, and computational biology. A vast majority of undergraduates will have the chance to conduct research in faculty labs, participate in activities and events sponsored by the Biological Sciences Student Advisory Council (BioSAC), and involve themselves in community science outreach programs.

Welcome all to the Department of Biological Sciences!