Amy Lu

Growing up in a small town in West Virginia, Amy Lu plans to major in Biomedical Engineering on the pre-med track at Columbia University.

Amy was first exposed to research in the summer of 2021. Working at the Du Laboratory at West Virginia University Health Sciences Center, she had the opportunity to actively engage in and contribute to a research endeavor on the tissue-specific sex differences between mice in fed vs. fasted states through data analysis. Using MetaboAnalyst, she was able to visualize the sex differences in various metabolites, helping determine that sex has a strong influence on eye and brain metabolism in tissue-specific and metabolic state-specific manners.

In the summer of 2022, Amy participated in an NIH-funded project at Du Lab to study mitochondrial metabolism in healthy and diseased retinas in order to prevent age-related macular degeneration. Through analysis using Fiji (ImageJ), she was able to reconstruct the 3D model of cellular mitochondria distribution for each photoreceptor, allowing for comparison between healthy and diseased photoreceptors.

Outside of research, Amy was heavily involved with her school’s Student Council throughout all 4 years of high school. Not only bridging the gap between teachers and the student body, the Student Council also has a heightened responsibility of orchestrating and overseeing fundraising initiatives. Serving as Class Treasurer and Student Body Treasurer, she played a significant role in organizing several fundraising events throughout the years to give back to not only the school and students but also the whole community.

Additionally, Amy co-founded the Science Olympiad club at her school so that students of all levels of experience can enjoy science. She was the co-president of the club and helped lead her school’s team to Nationals and set a new record placement for her state.

In her free time, Amy enjoys listening to music, binge-watching TV shows, playing tennis, and learning magic tricks to perform. She looks forward to exploring her interests and taking advantage of all the opportunities that Columbia and NYC have to offer!