2020-2021 Blavatnik Fellows Announced
Sep 01 2020
Fall 2020 Kaganov Fellows Announced
Sep 02 2020 | By Alexis Newman
Established in 2020 through the generosity of Carol Kaganov in honor of her late husband, Dr. Alan L. Kaganov (Columbia BME MS ’71, MS ’72, EngScD ’74), the Kaganov Doctoral Fellowships support two outstanding PhD students as they begin their studies in the Columbia BME doctoral program. The fellowship recipients are chosen based on the merits of their PhD program application.
Meet our Fellows below.
Yuxiang (Andy) Liu
Graduate Research Assistant
Laboratory for Neural Engineering and Control
PI: Qi Wang
Yuxiang Liu received his B.E. degree in Electronic Information Engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, China in 2018, and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. His previous research experience was studying human-robot interfaces at Peking University. He joined the Laboratory for Neural Engineering and Control (NECLab) in 2019 as an M.S. student. He was advised by Prof. Qi Wang to study the neural circuitry mediating the relationship between pupil-linked arousal and information transmission in the brain, using advanced biomedical techniques and statistical tools. He will be pursuing his PhD degree starting in Fall 2020. His current research focuses on neuromodulation of sensory processing.
I want to express my gratitude to the Graduate Committee for their recognition of my previous work, and to my P.I., Prof. Qi Wang, for his guidance. I cherish this encouragement and will keep going to accomplish a great deal on my journey!
Cameron Young Park
Graduate Research Assistant
Computational Cancer Biology Laboratory
PI: Elham Azizi
Cameron is a first year PhD student in the BME department and a member of the Azizi Lab. She is excited to dive into her research at the intersection of machine learning and cancer biology. While an undergraduate at Stanford, she majored in both Physics and Human Biology, and was a member of the varsity women's lacrosse team. After completing her undergraduate degrees in 2018, she stayed at Stanford for her Master of Science in Bioengineering. During her master’s program, she worked on a team in Irving Weissman’s Lab researching neural stem cells in the adult human brain. Originally from the Boston area, Cameron is happy to be back on the East Coast and cannot wait to start this fall!
I am really honored to have been awarded this fellowship. Dr. Kaganov and his wife were both highly accomplished in multiple fields, and I hope to bring that spirit of collaboration and interdisciplinary thinking into my own research. Thank you to Columbia SEAS for selecting me for this fellowship!