SyBBURE Student Highlights: Puxin Xuanyuan

Our very own Puxin Xuanyuan was recently featured on the Vanderbilt YouTube channel and news website in a story about her research and experience with SyBBURE! Watch the video:

It’s amazing to see our students getting the opportunity to share their experiences with the Vanderbilt community and beyond.

If you’re interested in learning more about our students’ research, check out our students page!

Read the full story about Puxin by Amy Wolf: ‘Research squad' propels student during two summer immersions’

SyBBURE Student Highlights: Jad El Harake

Jad El Harake embodies the spirit of SyBBURE. He is goofy, loves science, and was crazy enough to take a year of organic chemistry “for fun.” He is the big brother of SyBBURE. He is always available to help out, whether it’s reassuring a nervous student new to research and SyBBURE, or making a long day much better with one of his absurd jokes. If he has one weakness, it’s that he can easily be peer pressured to jump off a cliff because all his friends did!

Jad has a natural empathy and a knack for mentorship. As a sophomore, he became a VUceptor and an RA. He chose to do these leadership roles because he wanted to give back to Vanderbilt: “I have had an incredible 4 years at Vanderbilt full of amazing opportunities. I wanted to do my share to help other students adjust to college and learn to love Vanderbilt like I did.” His ability to collaborate with people and make them feel at ease around him will carry him far as a scientist.

In the lab, Jad is an ultrasound pro! His work involves simulating ultrasound on a computer, taking the results from the simulation, and translating it to the physical world. He improved his programming and critical thinking skills. His project aimed to improve how we focus ultrasonic beams through the skull. Rather than use a probe to image, ultrasound can focus like sunlight through a magnifying glass to heat up tissue or stimulate neurons in a confined area of the brain. So, surgery isn’t required to move the skull out of the way! Unfortunately, the skull distorts the beam and make it difficult to affect only a small region of the brain. Jad wrote a simulation that used a CT scan of a skull to predict how it would distort the focused ultrasound and correct those distortions. The results of the simulation were then passed to an actual probe to target the needed region of the brain with greater accuracy.

Jad’s advice for students who are interested in research is to get used to failure:

“Research is a lot more failure than success. Everything takes longer than you think because you always run into more problems than you think you will. Murphy’s Law is real! You have to be able to learn and grow from your failures. Grad students and PIs know that better than anyone, so don’t be afraid to disappoint them. Be aware that goals need to change as things come up. Change your goals and don’t chase a goal you can’t achieve yet.”

Jad can conquer the world. He is now a biomedical engineering graduate student at Columbia University, and we are so proud of him and all of his hard work! 

About mentor Charles Caksey: Dr. Charles Caskey is a professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt who studies the diagnostic and therapeutic uses of ultrasound. He is especially interested in image-guided therapy applications where therapeutic ultrasound is guided by ultrasonic imaging or combined with another imaging modality, such as MRI. Jad had a great experience in the Caskey Lab thanks to the mentorship and support of not only Dr. Caskey, but the other members of the lab (graduate and undergraduate students) as well.

Written by: Danielle Liu, Class of 2020

SyBBURE Student Highlights: Kevin Cyr

Could star-gazing display one’s future? We may never know that for sure, but it definitely set Kevin Cyr on the path to solving intriguing world problems with science and technology.Growing up in Houston, Kevin was surrounded with an environment that fostered a love for science. His father was an economist at NASA and his mother was an accountant. Together they always found fun, “science-y” things to do during their free time.

From an initial desire to become a theoretical physicist, Kevin’s fascination for making sense of the world with rigorous testing and analysis blossomed into a strong pursuit of scientific research with a laser-sharp focus on the health sector. If Kevin’s scientific drive was a flask with live cells,then SyBBURE was the incubator that provided the necessary environment to promote growth. With the freedom to explore and investigate Kevin was able to lose himself in solving real-world problems. For the past three years, Kevin has been working with Christina Marasco, Ph.D. to develop a straightforward, low-cost sickle cell diagnostic test. While pursuing a general interest in blood-based diagnostics, he discovered that Sickle Cell Disease is the world’s most prevalent genetic disorder and is expected to claim the lives of nearly 7 million newborns by 2050. He set out to create a simple way to diagnose the disease in the low-resource regions most afflicted by Sickle Cell Disease. After developing prototypes of the diagnostic device, he continued with validation studies and clinical testing in the lab of Jennifer Colby Ph.D. at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.Kevin has produced fascinating results after testing 80 subjects, generating a manuscript under review, and an international PCT patent in the process.

Scientific research is not the only thing that has kept Kevin busy in his undergraduate years. He has served as both Vice-President and President of the Vanderbilt Biomedical Engineering Society. His entrepreneurial interests are clearly evident as he was very active in the Vanderbilt Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and the Vanderbilt Innovation and Entrepreneurship Society. He also won the 48 Hour Launch and was a runner-up at the TechVenture Challenge.

A life-changing experience for Kevin was working with Pendant Biosciences, a start-up life sciences company for the past two and a half years. Shawn Glinter, the CEO, and team have been instrumental in providing Kevin with necessary insights into business strategy and entrepreneurship, and Kevin cannot wait to apply those teachings in his upcoming ventures.

In addition to his professional ventures, Kevin has interesting hobbies that include cooking. Whether it’s making chocolate soufflés or plant-based Middle Eastern cuisine, you can be sure that Kevin is a top-notch chef,and fellow SyBBURE students can gladly confirm.

Admission to one of the top medical schools in the US is no small achievement, and we are certain that Kevin will wow the healthcare industry upon his graduation from the Stanford University School of Medicine.

About mentors Christina Marasco, Ph.D and Jennifer Colby, Ph.D: “I have spent the majority of my project working with Christina Marasco, Ph.D. and Jennifer Colby, Ph.D. who have helped guide my scientific endeavors. Their expertise has helped me grow as an independent researcher by focusing my skepticism. They have encouraged me to test all of my assumptions at every step of the way and not take anything at face value. Without their support and knowledge, my work would still be stuck in the prototyping phase, but with their help I've been able to develop a diagnostic device with the potential for commercial translation. That’s a rare opportunity for any person, let alone an undergraduate student.“

Good luck Kevin! We will miss you and your well-articulated questions and arguments at SyBBURE!

Written by: Somto Dimobi, Class of 2019

SyBBURE Student Highlights: Jarrod Shilts

Looking across at Jarrod at a SyBBURE meeting, either giving a presentation with articulately designed graphics or pondering on an intricate problem, you might imagine that Jarrod always knew he would be a “scientist-engineer”... and you would be right. From rudimentary electronics and Legos in elementary school, to genomics and genetic manipulations in college, Jarrod has shown outstanding skill in scientific research.

Jarrod’s introduction to SyBBURE was directly linked to his leadership of Vanderbilt’s iGEM lab, where he developed techniques for generating resistant, synthetic DNA and designing systems for directing the evolution of biological functions and sequencing DNA at high speeds among other smaller projects.Before summer 2017, Jarrod spent time in a lab that used targeted genetic modifications in fruit flies to test how the nervous system develops.His primary project was the creation of a new genetically-engineered line of flies that mimicked one of the key characteristics of models of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Through this project, Jarrod made tremendous progress by determining how a particularly significant ASD pathway gave rise to defects in neural development and proposing an alternate mechanism that may suggest new drug targets. While working as a SyBBURE fellow for summer 2017, Jarrod switched paths to work in a bioinformatics / genomics lab which studies the biology of human tumors as compared to healthy tissue. He is discovering exciting information about the different type of cancers by characterizing the changes in the biological clock of cancer cells compared to normal cells using a new statistical technique. This project has the potential to generate hypothesis about how cancer cells cause uncontrolled proliferation and this will break barriers in the fight against cancer.

Jarrod has the mind of a ground-breaking scientist, and we can only wait to see his phenomenal contributions to his chosen field. He summarizes the SyBBURE experience as one that can whatever you make it to be, with all the opportunities and pitfalls that come with so much potential.

As for his future career, Jarrod sees himself definitely working in science with a mentorship role in either academia or industry. He proceeds to Cambridge this fall to work for the Sanger Institute, an institute which is at the forefront of genetic research and will be sure to revolutionize the genomics industry as we know it. The Sanger Institute held a lot of promise for Jarrod because of its unprecedented research in genomic sequences and highly collaborative culture.

About mentor Kendal Broadie: Kendal Broadie studies the development, function and adaptability of the nervous system using genetic approaches. He focuses on the information transfer and information storage in cells of the nervous system. Working with the Broadie lab gave Jarrod an invaluable experience and the knowledge that he wanted to pursue genetics.

About mentor Jake Hughey: Jake Hughey uses machine learning and multi-scale analysis to improve understanding of biological systems related to human health, including gastrointestinal disease and circadian rhythms.Jarrod worked on a project that investigated the correlation of gene expression timing in normal and cancerous cells, identifying a variety of hypothesis about cancer causing genes. This experience gave Jarrod computational skills that he will use in future endeavors.With all certainty, Jarrod will be an incredible addition to all his future teams! We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors, Jarrod! Go ahead and conquer the world of genomics research!

Written by: Somto Dimobi, Class of 2019