Carnegie Mellon University
August 25, 2017

New Academic Year, New Graduate Students!

New Graduate Students

The Department of Biological Sciences welcomes all of its new graduate students for the start of a new academic year. Nine Ph.D. candidates and twenty-four M.S. in Computational Biology (MSCB) students begin their studies in our department.

Over the next few weeks, our nine incoming Ph.D. 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.

“The Biological Sciences program excites me because it includes some of the most absorbing work I have seen being conducted by a community of incredibly creative, driven, and welcoming students and faculty,” said Alexander Hodge, an incoming Ph.D. student from Owosso, Michigan, who previously received his B.S. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Christina Akirtava, another incoming Ph.D. student who studied Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, echoed Hodge’s statement and spoke about why she chose to pursue her Ph.D. at CMU.

“In choosing a Ph.D. program, the one piece of advice I got from everyone was to pick a school that has the best faculty,” Akirtava said. “Going to CMU during the interview weekend, I felt at home. Every professor was genuinely excited to meet the students and very supportive of my goals to mix wet-lab and computational methods in my research.”

Additionally, the twenty-four incoming MSCB student are joining the department in the joint program with the Computational Biology Department. They are coming from all over the globe, with previous degrees in biology, bioinformatics, chemistry, agricultural science, mathematics, computer science, and other related fields. 

The new curriculum for the MSCB program has students taking foundation courses in programming, data structures, and applied cell and molecular biology, along with background coursework and breadth and depth courses focused on their chosen area of concentration.

Below is a list of all of our incoming graduate students. Best of luck to all of them and a warm welcome to the Department of Biological Sciences at CMU!

Incoming Ph.D. students

  • Christina Akirtava
    Previous degree: B.S. in Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology with minors in Astrobiology, Electronic Arts, and Psychology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • Max Cravener
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biology with a minor in Chemistry from Lock Haven University
  • Daniel Crosby
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biological Sciences with a minor in Statistics from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
  • Fiona Fitzgerald
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with a minor in Microbiology from Penn State University
  • Alexander Hodge
    Previous degree: B.S. in Neuroscience with a minor in German from the University of Michigan
  • Cam LaJeunesse
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biology/Biotechnology from Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Karina Mueller Brown
    Previous degree: M.S. in Infection Biology and Cell Biology from Technische Universität Braunschweig and a B.S. in Medical Biotechnology from Universität Rostock
  • Ian Rosner
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biology with a minor in Neuroscience from Wake Forest University
  • Sarah Werner
    Previous degree: B.S. in Microbiology with a Biomedical concentration and minors in Chemistry and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Incoming MSCB students

  • Xiaoyue Cui
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biological Sciences from Tsinghua University
  • Ziyi Cui
    Previous degree: M.S. in Biochemistry from University College London
  • Xiaoqi Fang
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biological Sciences from Fudan University
  • Saideep Gona
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biology and Public Health in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Sarah Hsu
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles
  • Xinyu Huang
    Previous degree: B.E. in Neuro Education from Southeast University
  • Meaghan Kennedy
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biology with a minor in Bioinformatics from Eastern Connecticut State University
  • Kwanho Kim
    Previous degree: B.S. in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Mo Li
    Previous degree: Ph.D. in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China
  • Xinling Li
    Previous degree: B.S. in Bioengineering/Bioinformatics with a minor in Economics from the University of California, San Diego
  • Weicheng Lin
    Previous degree: B.S. in Chemistry from Zhejiang University
  • Jiachen Liu
    Previous degree: B.A. in Biochemistry with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Iowa
  • Fox Liu
    Previous degree: B.S. in Bioinformatics from Tongji University
  • Xiaodi Pan
    Previous degree: B.S. from the University of Science and Technology of China
  • Varaha Karthik Pattisapu
    Previous degree: B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology
  • Chaoying Wang
    Previous degree: B.E. from Sun Yat-sen University
  • Brendan Wee
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biology from University of California, Los Angeles
  • Caryn Willis
    Previous degree: B.S. in Mathematics with a minor in Actuarial Science from Indiana Wesleyan University
  • Yuting Xiao
    Previous degree: B.A. in Computer Science with minors in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Minnesota, Morris
  • Yiru Xu
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of California, San Diego
  • Yiwen Xu
    Previous degree: B.S. in Plant Science and Technology from Huazhong Agricultural University
  • Zhenyu Yang
    Previous degree: B.S. in Animal Science from Zhejiang University
  • Mengxin Zhang
    Previous degree: B.S. in Applied Biology with Biotechnology from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University
  • Yuheng Zhang
    Previous degree: B.S. in Biological Sciences from Tianjin University