Blavatnik Doctoral Fellows: 2025-2026 Cohort
Kaden Du, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Kaden is an incoming M.S./Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical Engineering Department. He is entering the Bioelectronic Systems Lab under Professor Ken Shepard. Kaden graduated with his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northeastern University, where he served as a research assistant in the Energy Efficient Circuits and Systems Group. There, he conducted research on circuits for wireless power transfer. In addition, Kaden has industry experience working on a wide range of electronics, from steerable antenna technology to power electronics. At Columbia, Kaden hopes to develop wireless circuits in a biological context, furthering implant and imaging technologies. This research will enable earlier diagnosis, personalized treatment, and continuous monitoring for a variety of diseases.
Joshua D. Myers, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Joshua received his B.S. in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he utilized computer vision to improve navigational transrectal ultrasound technologies. He then completed an M.S. in bioengineering from Columbia University at the Azizi Lab utilizing Bayesian hierarchical models and statistically driven machine learning on cancer data to study multimodal integration for clonal detection, integration of spatial transcriptome and metabolome for trajectory inference, learning of mechanism of action from perturbation data to gene modules, and identifying cell-cell interactions. His interests are machine learning, deep generative modeling, and genomics to characterize the tumor microenvironment directly from patient specimens. He is excited to continue being advised by Dr. Elham Azizi as he furthers his research on the heterogeneous tumor microenvironment, which will contribute to the understanding of cancer progression and therapeutic response and inform the development of more effective targeted treatments worldwide.
Ruoxuan (Rosie) Wang, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Rosie earned her B.S. in Computer Engineering from New York University, and she will be joining Columbia University as an M.S./Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering under the guidance of Dr. Elisa Konofagou. As an undergraduate, she conducted research at the Ultrasound and Elasticity Imaging Laboratory, where she worked on machine learning projects for developing interpretations of ultrasound images. In her Ph.D. research, she will advance innovative solutions at the intersection of AI and medical imaging to improve diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of breast cancer, a disease that impacts over two million women worldwide. She looks forward to continuing her research in the Konofagou Lab and to collaborating closely with engineers, physicians, and oncologists across the Columbia community.
Ruxi Xia, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Ruxi is from Wuhan, China, and she graduated from Clemson University with a B.S. in biochemistry with departmental honors in bioengineering. For her honors thesis project, she conducted research on delivering siRNA to 2D and 3D ovarian cancer cells using tandem peptides in the Nanobiotechnology Lab. Ruxi led many projects highlighting cellular structures through immunofluorescence staining and confocal microscopy at the Clemson Light Imaging Facility. She has also gained experience in analytical chemistry as a Manufacturing and Quality Intern at Eli Lilly and Co. in Indianapolis. At Columbia, Ruxi is excited to join the Yousefpour Lab as a M.S./Ph.D. student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Ruxi is passionate about continuing conducting clinically translatable research in immunohistochemistry and cancer cell treatment and to prevent unnecessary cancer due to late stage diagnosis, malignancy, and lack of effective treatment options.
Jiawen (Elsa) Zou, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Jiawen (Elsa) Zou received her M.Eng. in molecular bioengineering from Imperial College London in June 2025 and joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering as a Ph.D. student this fall. Her previous research encompassed magnet-assisted fabrication of 3D bioscaffolds, microfluidic strategies for vascularization, and multifunctional microrobots for targeted delivery. For her senior project, she developed a strategy for the fabrication of anisotropic microvascular networks in vitro. Her research interests focus on biomimetic vascular network engineering and microfluidic tissue models for cancer metastasis studies. At Columbia, she will join Professor Ke Cheng’s lab and work on developing stem cell- and exosome-based strategies for tissue regeneration and cancer therapy. Her research aims to develop groundbreaking strategies for heart repair after myocardial infarction, with the potential to transform treatment for people with heart disease worldwide.