Amy Jang

Amy Jang is majoring in Biomedical Engineering, with a specific interest in computational modeling and computer science. In her freshman year, Amy was a research intern at the Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing (LIINC) under Dr. Sajda and at the Neurorehabilitation Research Lab (NRL) under Dr. Lori Quinn at Columbia University. At LIINC, Amy applied data science and machine learning algorithms to analyze how speakers’ gestures and audio affect audience’s comprehension and grasp of knowledge, and at NRL, she is working with Radhika Desai on EEG analysis to help determine the neurophysiological motor responses of gait initiation in Huntington’s and Parkinson’s Disease.

During the past summer, Amy interned at City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, California under Dr. Rockne in the Division of Mathematical Oncology. Over the summer, she analyzed scRNA-seq data to determine cell trajectories after exposure to certain cancer treatments and built mathematical models to explain the trajectories of these cells.

Currently, along with research at NRL, Amy is doing research in Dana Pe’er’s Lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she is developing a new algorithm for pseudotime ordering and directionality by implementing RNA velocity technologies. She is also a computational biology lead for the Systems Biology Initiative, an executive board member for Columbia Data Science Society, and the Activities Co-chair for Columbia Synapse.

In her free time, Amy loves exploring New York City and going to nice cafes (she is a coffee enthusiast!). She also loves going to amusement parks and ziplining, and one of the items on her bucket list is to go skydiving.