Annabelle Cao

Annabelle is from Crozet, Virginia and graduated from Western Albemarle High School. At Columbia, she hopes to major in biomedical engineering and explore the intersection of biomechanics and human health.

During high school, Annabelle developed a strong interest in both the sciences and the arts. Through biology courses at the University of Virginia, as well as her participation in NASA’s Virginia Space Grant Consortium Building Leaders for Advancing Science and Technology (BLAST) program, Virginia Space Coast Scholars (VSCS) program, and Virginia Earth System Science Scholars (VESSS) program, she explored a broad range of scientific principles and gained hands-on experience approaching complex topics from an interdisciplinary perspective. At her high school, she held the roles of co-president of the Science National Honor Society chapter, president of the Future Business Leaders of America chapter, and co-founder and co-president of the Pickleball Club. Artistically, Annabelle has pursued her passion for ballet, jazz, contemporary dance, piano, and visual arts by participating in dance intensives at the Joffrey Ballet School, leading and organizing piano sessions for residents at her local retirement home’s memory care center, and creating artistic displays for the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library.

Annabelle spent three years researching bio-inspired swimming by conducting computational fluid dynamics research on fish locomotion through 3D reconstructions and flow simulations with Maya, Tecplot, and MATLAB. Working under Dr. Haibo Dong and PhD candidate Alec Menzer at the University of Virginia’s Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering in the Flow Simulation Research Group (FSRG), Annabelle produced a multi-view reconstruction and high-fidelity flow simulation of a bluegill sunfish performing a rolling maneuver, which was presented at the ASME 2025 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Additionally, Annabelle worked under Dr. Kevin Janes and Dr. Matthew Lazzara at the University of Virginia’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. Through image analysis in pancreatic cancer research and bibliometric analyses of faculty in the NCI-funded Center for Systems Analysis of Stress-adapted Cancer Organelles (SASCO), Annabelle has explored both computational approaches and the broader landscape of cancer research. Furthermore, with the guidance of SASCO data manager Andrea Denton, she went on to present her analysis of over 500 publications and 19,000 citations in a poster at the 2025 SASCO Research Symposium entitled A Bibliometric Analysis of Citation Practices Among Basic and Clinical Faculty in SASCO.

As a Columbia Engineering student, Annabelle is eager to build upon her research experience in biomechanics and computational modeling while exploring new questions that hold the potential to improve human health and quality of life.