Merkin Graduate Fellows Program

Kristina R. Brandveen

Research Abroad Experience: Mérida, Mexico (Fall 2024-Winter 2025)

Kristina Brandveen (she/her/hers) is a doctoral student in the UCSD/SDSU Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health on the Global Health track interested in environmental epidemiology, implementation science, and dissemination. She is passionate about health equity and reducing health disparities within Black and Indigenous populations throughout the Americas. As a Merkin Graduate Fellow, she will be studying cancer risk perception within a predominantly Maya shoe-making community with mentors at la Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán and el Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública while based in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. 

Scott Morton

Research Abroad Experience: Vinh, Vietnam (Fall 2024-Winter 2025)

Scott Morton is a Biological Sciences PhD student in the Department of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution. As a Merkin Fellow, he will investigate the linked impacts from subsistence hunting and artisanal mining on the structure of stream food webs and their effects on the bioaccumulation of mining toxins in the tissues of harvested species. Centered in Vu Quang National Park and Ke Go Natural Reserve, his research aims to co-develop rapid assessment protocols and sustainable harvest guidelines with local communities to improve wildlife conservation and reduce contaminant exposure.

Katherine O'Connor

Research Abroad Experience: Adelaide, Australia (Fall 2024-Winter 2025)

Katie O’Connor is a PhD student in the Bioengineering program, working under Jeff Hasty in the Biodynamics lab on synthetic biological approaches to solid tumor treatments and diagnostics. As a Merkin Graduate Fellow, Katie will travel to the University of Adelaide for her research centering around understanding the host-microbe relationship within the tumor microenvironment, with a focus on harnessing unique physiological signatures for targeted diagnostics and drug delivery. Outside of her research, she works with the Synthetic Biology Institute outreach program teaching elementary school students at Lafayette Elementary.

Anthony Omole

Research Abroad Experience: Aachen, Germany (Fall 2024)

Anthony Omole received his bachelor's degree in Chemical Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with diblock copolymers to form micellar systems for biomedical and environmental applications. He continued his research at the National Cancer Institute , studying proteases with activity-based probes and inhibitors and their relationship to immunological problems and cancer. He joined the Steinmetz Lab at UC San Diego in September 2021, where he is developing cancer immunotherapy platforms using plant nanotechnology. As a Merkin Graduate Fellow, Anthony will travel to the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen to conduct research on the use of cowpea mosaic virus in humans as a cancer immunotherapy treatment.

Lauren Ostrowski

Research Abroad Experience: Maastricht, Netherlands (Spring 2024)

Lauren Ostrowski is an MD/PhD student in the Neurosciences Graduate Program. As a Merkin Fellow, she will travel to Maastricht University to further study the neural dynamics underlying speech production in multilingual speakers, with the ultimate goal of contributing to the development of neuroprosthetic speech brain-computer interfaces capable of restoring naturalistic communication for individuals affected by aphasia. She has published several papers exploring the neural underpinnings of speech and language development and dysfunction using a range of multimodal neuroimaging and recording techniques. Lauren is also involved in pre-medical and pre-graduate advising, the LGBTQ+ Health Alliance, Public Health Advocates for Climate, and the Homeless Health Initiative.

Masfiqur Rahaman

Research Abroad Experience: Dhaka, Bangladesh (Spring 2025-Summer 2025)

Masfiqur Rahaman is pursuing his PhD in Data Science under the supervision of Prof. Tauhidur Rahman. Masfiqur completed his BSc and MSc in Computer Science and Engineering from the Department of CSE at BUET, Bangladesh in the years 2021 and 2023 respectively. Currently, he is working on investigating policy-level interventions towards heat resiliency for rickshaw pullers in Dhaka city. Through this research endeavor, he is mentoring undergraduate students from BUET to collect environmental and physiological data from rickshaw pullers. Through research, Masfiqur wants to serve the most underserved communities in the global south and solve problems that are most neglected in society.

Einollah (Ali) Sarikhani

Research Abroad Experience: Lausanne, Switzerland (Fall 2024-Winter 2025)

Ali Sarikhani is a PhD student in the Nanoengineering program working in the Jahed lab. His research, for which he will travel as a Merkin Graduate Fellow to the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, is breaking new ground in the study of bacterial behavior in infectious diseases. Ali's project focuses on uncovering the complex molecular mechanisms behind bacterial mechanosensing, utilizing nanopattern platforms.Ali's work aims to elucidate how pathogens sense and navigate obstacles on surfaces, a critical factor in their survival and pathogenicity. The insights gained from Ali’s work could pave the way for new strategies in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of biofilm-associated infections, particularly in clinical settings.

Jessica de Souza

Research Abroad Experience: Sao Paulo, Brazil (Fall 2024-Winter 2025)

Jessica is a Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego and a Graduate Student Researcher in the Digital Health Technologies Lab under the guidance of Dr. Edward Wang. She is dedicated to exploring the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), digital health systems, and artificial intelligence, focusing on women's health. Jessica's dissertation seeks to enhance telehealth consultations through an AI-mediated patient triaging system, improving interactions between healthcare practitioners and their stakeholders. Her professional experience includes internships at Qualcomm and Microsoft Research, where she grounded her skills in translational health research.

Maya Vasishth

Research Abroad Experience: Yokohama, Japan (Winter 2025-Spring 2025)

Maya is beginning the 4th year of her Biomedical Sciences PhD researching new drugs to target neural network dysfunction in schizophrenia. She was awarded the Pharmacological Sciences T32 Training Grant her second year. She has previously published a paper studying neural circuit disruptions that overlap in both schizophrenia and autism based on work she did at the Yale Child Study Center. Maya has participated in the Med into Grad program while at UCSD as well as attending the Neuroscience School of Advanced Studies in Venice. Maya also mentors many young interns from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM, teaching them both benchwork techniques as well as how to think critically when designing experiments to answer a scientific question.

Mariya Kazachkova

Research Abroad Experience: Manchester, England (Winter 2025-Spring 2025)

Mariya Kazachkova is a Biomedical Sciences PhD student supervised by Dr. Ludmil Alexandrov. She is interested in using computational tools to study cancer development and is currently focused on identifying associations between mutational signatures and Western diet in colorectal cancer. As a Merkin Graduate Fellow, she will travel to the University of Manchester to further her understanding of the evolutionary trajectory of mutational signatures in colorectal cancer. Outside of her own research, Mariya is passionate about mentoring. She has mentored both high school and undergraduate students, and she has been working with elementary school students as part of San Diego Refugee Tutoring for the last 4 years.

Onyeka Chukwudozie

Research Abroad Experience: London, England and Lagos, Nigeria (Winter 2024-Spring 2024)

Onyeka Chukwudozie is a PhD student in Biological Sciences whose research centers on developing long-lasting neutralizing antibodies that are cross-reactive against multiple lineages of Lassa virus. As a Merkin Graduate Fellow, he will characterize the human B cell response to the LASV vaccination using novel, conformation-specific antigens at the Human Immunology Lab at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and Imperial College London. Onyeka aims for his research to inform the design of next-generation vaccines that more effectively protect against the development of Lassa Fever.

Read the story behind Onyeka's international research pursuits here.

Mir Fatimah Kanth

Research Abroad Experience: London, England (Spring 2024)

Mir Fatimah Kanth is a PhD candidate in the Anthropology program at UCSD. She received her MSc in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, as a commonwealth scholar in 2016 and a B.A. (honors) in Political Science from the University of Delhi in 2014. Her dissertation research explores Kashmiri diasporic experiences in the West at the intersection of migration, memory and belonging, and violence. 

Mitchell Kong

Research Abroad Experience: Cambridge, England (Fall 2023-Winter 2024)

Mitchell Kong is a PhD candidate in Bioengineering studying genetic mutations found in populations living in extreme conditions and linking those mutations to adaptive phenotypes. He seeks to apply engineering techniques to develop ways to maintain biological function despite environmental stress. As a Merkin Graduate Fellow, he will travel to the University of Cambridge to investigate the effects of genetic variants in the heme degradation pathway on mitochondrial bioenergetics.

Reid Larsen

Research Abroad Experience: Copenhagen, Denmark (Spring 2024)

Reid Larsen is a Biomedical Sciences PhD candidate in the Daneman lab at UC San Diego. His research focuses on the unique properties of the brain's blood vessels -- specifically, he studies the dense sugar coating on the vessel surface. In his research as a Merkin Graduate Fellow in the Lauritzen lab at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, Reid will be using advanced imaging techniques to study the function of this sugar coating in health and how it changes in neuroinflammatory disease.

Adam Li

Research Abroad Experience: Kyoto, Japan (Winter 2024)

Adam Li is a PhD student in the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology program. He is primarily interested in anti-aging and rejuvenation through the lens of epigenetics and reprogramming. As a Merkin Fellow, his research at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University will investigate the epigenetic aging mechanisms that occur when the process of reprogramming is undertaken and will utilize computational approaches and machine learning to optimize the workflow. The aim of this research is to improve disease modeling and monitoring, ultimately leading to more timely interventions and improved treatments for a multitude of diseases.

Hui Xin Ng

Research Abroad Experience: London, England (Winter 2024-Spring 2024)

Hui Xin Ng is a PhD candidate in Cognitive Science examining the association between brain aging and bipolar disorder. Aging is associated with changes in the brain's structure and function, as well as cognitive decline; Hui Xin's work is focused on further developing and evaluating brain imaging-based tools to predict an individual’s aging trajectory. She is also interested in healthcare technology that democratizes healthcare access. As a Merkin Graduate Fellow, Hui Xin will travel to University College London to further a collaboration with the MANIFOLD lab in analyzing machine learning models for brain age prediction and their application to the study of brain aging in bipolar disorder.

Anupam (Anand) Ojha

Research Abroad Experience: Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany (Spring 2024)

Anupam (Anand) Ojha is a PhD candidate in Chemistry and Biochemistry, and as a Merkin Graduate Fellow, will conduct research at the University of Freiburg. He specializes in theoretical and computational biophysics, with expertise in protein-ligand interactions, enhanced sampling, and simulation-driven drug design. Anand has developed advanced algorithms and software packages; received numerous awards, fellowships, and invitations to speak at conferences; and produced multiple publications, with several as first author. Anand's commitment to promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion is evident from his involvement in the UC San Diego academic senate committee, Chemistry International Friendship Group, and Chemistry Graduate Student Council.

Shivani Shukla

Research Abroad Experience: Aachen, Germany (Winter 2024- Spring 2024)

Shivani Shukla, a PhD candidate in Bioengineering, will perform research at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule in Aachen, Germany. There, she will merge the electrophysiology hardware platform she has been using at UC San Diego with her host lab’s hardware in order to obtain electrical measurements from healthy and traumatic brain injury-derived neuronal networks that will illuminate the mechanisms of neuronal network electrical communication. She aims for her work to enable more robust preclinical studies of drug screening and therapeutic development for neurological diseases including CTE and Alzheimer’s.

Louise Stolz

Research Abroad Experience: Lausanne, Switzerland (Spring 2024)

Louise Stolz is a PhD student in the Neurosciences Graduate Program in Dr. Greg Appelbaum's lab. During her research as a Merkin Graduate Fellow, she will be working with Dr. Micah Murray in Lausanne, Switzerland on studying neurodevelopment of multisensory processing in infants using brain imaging modalities. Louise has published several papers during her PhD including one on developing predictive biomarkers of treatment response using EEG. Outside of her research, she works at the UCSD Career Center as a graduate school advisor and has participated in several mentorship communities within NGP.

Yaohan Wu

Research Abroad Experience: Fudon, China  (Fall 2023-Winter 2024)

Yaohan is a PhD candidate in Anthropology. As a bioarchaeologist, she is interested in employing interdisciplinary research to understand how populations in prehistoric times adapted to the geoenvironmental stressors as well as the emerging zoonoses around them. In particular, she studies the changes in past populations’ management style of animals in prehistoric China in relation to potential zoonotic transmissions. As a Merkin Fellow, she will travel to Fudon University in China to research the relationship between animal-human interaction and zoonotic diseases in Northwest China during the late Neolithic.

Morgen A. Chalmiers

Research Abroad Experience: Amman, Jordan (Winter 2023-Spring 2023)

Morgen A. Chalmiers is an MD/PhD candidate in Psychological & Medical Anthropology. Her fieldwork and clinical practice are informed by the paradigm of reproductive justice and a commitment to addressing health disparities through an intersectional framework. She is passionate about integrating anthropological insights into clinical practice and health policy through interdisciplinary collaboration. As a Merkin Graduate Fellow, her research in Jordan will explore perinatal mental health among refugee women in order to inform evidence-based interventions to better support refugee women during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

Melina Economou

Research Abroad Experience: Toronto, Canada (Spring 2023-Summer 2023)

Melina Economou is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology doing ethnographic fieldwork at hospices in Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on what living while dying looks and feels like for people in the period of time when curative treatment fails and before physiological end-of-life. Using a patient-centered perspective, her research as a Merkin Graduate Fellow contributes to translational medicine's third pillar, Community, by conducting ethnographic research on how people living with life-limiting illnesses navigate daily life, the healthcare system, and their caregiving networks, and how they make decisions about their health and well-being.

Ramsey Ismail

Research Abroad Experience: Tokyo, Japan (Spring 2023 and Fall 2023)

Ramsey Ismail, a PhD candidate in Anthropology, will travel to Tokyo, Japan to conduct and share his research on social withdrawal and mental health amid the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions in Japan. In particular, his work will build on his previous research into the phenomenon of hikikomori (long-term social recluses) to investigate how a global crisis can further complicate already fraught mental health concerns. His goal is for his research to ultimately address broader pressing mental health concerns in Japan and provide novel, affordable solutions for mental health issues both in Japan and worldwide.

Kristine Teppang

Research Abroad Experience: Fribourg, Switzerland (Winter 2023)

Kristine Teppang is a PhD candidate working in the lab of Prof. Yang in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department. Her research involves developing small-molecule fluorescent probes that can bind to proteins in Alzheimer’s Disease. In collaboration with Prof. Mayer at the Adolphe Merkle Institute at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland during her time as a Merkin Graduate Fellow, she will use technology developed in their lab to test the ability of our probes to detect proteins in cerebrospinal fluid.

Jonathan Pekar

Research Abroad Experience: Greifswald, Germany (Winter 2023)

Jonathan Pekar is a PhD candidate in Bioinformatics & Systems Biology in Joel Wertheim's lab. During his research as a Merkin Graduate Fellow at the Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Germany, he will be extracting, sequencing, and analyzing archival measles samples from the 1950s through the early 2000s to examine how the genetic diversity of measles changed due to measles vaccination campaigns conducted near the end of the twentieth century. This research on the evolutionary history of measles can inform and evaluate the impact of vaccination strategies for both currently circulating viruses and those that have yet to emerge.