Members
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Elham Azizi
Principal Investigator Bio: Elham joined Columbia in 2020 as the Herbert and Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Cancer Data Research in the Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering. She is also affiliated with the Department of Computer Science, Data Science Institute, and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. Elham holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Bioinformatics from Boston University. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Dana Pe'er Lab at Columbia University and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her multidisciplinary research utilizes novel machine learning techniques and single-cell genomic and imaging technologies to study the dynamics and circuitry of interacting cells in the tumor microenvironment. She is a recipient of the CZI Science Diversity Leadership Award, NSF CAREER Award, Tri-Institutional Breakout Prize for Junior Investigators, NIH NCI Pathway to Independence Award, an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship, and an IBM Best Paper Award at the New England Statistics Symposium. Curriculum Vitae Teaching: BMEN 4480 Statistical Machine Learning in Genomics (Spring Semester) |
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Lingting Shi Postdoctoral Research Scientist (co-mentored with José McFaline-Figueroa) Lingting is a postdoctoral research scientist at the Herbert and Florence Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics. She received a BS in biomedical engineering at Rutgers University, where she worked on developing an in vitro approach to identifying skin sensitizers with machine learning tools in Dr. Martin Yarmush’s Lab. Then for her Ph.D. degree, she joined Dr. Lance Kam’s lab at Columbia BME to study the mechanosensing of regulatory T cell induction for the generation of Tregs to treat autoimmune diseases. Now Lingting is very excited to study cancer with computational approaches and explore the interaction between the immune system and cancer in the Azizi lab! Outside of the lab, Lingting enjoys cycling, camping, traveling, and exploring NYC. |
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Achille Nazaret PhD student (co-advised with David Blei) Achille is currently a Columbia PhD student in Computer Science. He previously studied at Ecole Polytechnique in France, where he developed his passion for theoretical science (mathematics, statistics, physics, CS) and machine learning. Achille has oriented his scientific excitement toward biology and genomics when conducting research in the Yosef Computational Biology lab at UC Berkeley in 2019. He is enthused about the potential of data, computer power and rigorous analytical tools to solve global issues and he hopes to make valuable progress in the Azizi Lab! |
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Cameron Park PhD Student, Kaganov Fellow Cameron is a PhD student in the BME department. While an undergraduate at Stanford, she majored in both Physics and Human Biology, and was a member of the varsity women's lacrosse team. After completing her undergraduate degrees in 2018, she stayed at Stanford for her Master's in Bioengineering. Originally from the Boston area, Cameron is happy to be back on the East Coast and is very excited to be able to explore machine learning and cancer biology in the Azizi lab! |
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Joy (Linyue) Fan MS/PhD Student, Van C. Mow Fellow Joy is a current PhD student in the BME department. She completed undergraduate training at MIT, where she studied Biological Engineering with a minor in Computer Science. Her previous work in the MIT Synthetic Biology Center involved using deep learning approaches to study the behavior of synthetic circuits in human stem cells. She is excited about working at the intersection of computer science, engineering, and experimental biology, and hopes to develop novel machine learning methods for the study of cancer in the Azizi lab. |
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Siyu He PhD student (co-advised with Kam Leong) Siyu is currently a PhD student in the BME department. She majored in physics previously at Xian Jiaotong University in China, and she developed interests in bioengineering and finished her bachelor thesis during RA at Harvard. She is currently applying machine learning and single-cell genomic technologies to tissue engineering, and aims to understand the genetic lesion and developmental dynamics of engineered organs. She is also enthusiastic about studying stem cell and cancer cell interaction, and excited about doing amazing research in the Azizi lab! |
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Yinuo Jin MS/PhD Student, Columbia Presidential Fellow Yinuo is currently pursuing his PhD in BME after completing his BS in Computer Science at Columbia. He is interested in applying computational and statistical methods to sequence analysis, especially processing single-cell and long-read sequencing data. |
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Ioana Lia
MS/PhD Student (co-advised with José McFaline-Figueroa) Ioana is currently pursuing her PhD in the Biomedical Engineering department at Columbia University. She completed her undergraduate degrees in Applied Mathematics and Biomedical Engineering at Columbia, where she became interested in better understanding cancer and its possible solutions. After working on engineering bacteria to treat cancer in the Danino lab, Ioana is hoping to use single cell genomics and machine learning methods to gain more insight into the disease progression and treatment response in cancer; and she is very excited to do so under the guidance of Prof. Azizi and Prof. McFaline-Figueroa. |
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Justin Hong PhD Student Justin is a Columbia PhD student in the CS department. He completed his undergrad and Master’s at UC Berkeley in 2020 where he studied Computer Science & Molecular and Cellular Biology with an emphasis in Immunology. Justin has experience developing methods for single-cell data analysis in both the Song Lab and the Yosef Lab at UC Berkeley. He hopes to continue developing computational methods to uncover valuable biological insights in the Azizi Lab! |
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Kevin Hoffer-Hawlik
MS/PhD Student (co-advised with José McFaline-Figueroa), Blavatnik Fellow Kevin graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in Biomedical Engineering with High Honors and is an entering MS/PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Department at Columbia. As an undergraduate, he conducted research using data science and machine learning to improve emerging biomedical imaging modalities such as fluorescence-guided surgery and photoacoustic imaging in breast cancer. After graduating, Kevin joined ClearView Healthcare Partners as a strategy consultant to advise biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. He is interested in advancing novel therapeutics in cancer and other intractable diseases. He joins the Azizi and McFaline-Figueroa labs to further their work in machine learning and cancer biology dynamics. |
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Mingxuan Zhang Rotation PhD Student Ming is a Ph.D. student in the Molecular Therapeutics and Pharmacology department at Columbia University Medical Center. He completed his BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from UC San Diego in 2019 and his MS in Computational Biology from Cornell University in 2022. Mingxuan has experience developing deep learning and statistical models for cancer genomics data at New York Genome Center and MSKCC. His research focuses on developing novel machine learning models for graph data to decode cancer dynamics under molecular therapies with interaction networks. He is excited to create interpretable machine learning models that offer quantitative perspectives on the effect of cancer drugs and therapies in the Azizi lab. |
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Shouvik Mani MS Student Shouvik is pursuing his MS in Computer Science. Previously, he was a Data Scientist at C3 AI, where he built AI applications for various industries. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2018 with a BS in Statistics and Machine Learning. His research focuses on (1) developing novel machine learning methods which incorporate prior knowledge and learn from limited labeled data, and (2) applying these methods to problems in computational biology. He is also passionate about teaching Computer Science. Outside of the lab, he enjoys running, playing soccer, and reading! |
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Crystal Shin MS Student Crystal is currently pursuing her MS in biomedical engineering. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a major in biomedical engineering and minors in computer science and bioinformatics. Her research interests lie in the intersection of genomics, cancer biology, and machine learning. In her free time, she loves to cook, ice skate, and play video games. She is excited to join the Azizi lab and hopes to work on amazing research projects with everyone. |
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Xumin Shen MS Student Xumin is currently a MS student in the BME department. She majored in Bioinformatics previously at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, where she worked in the Wei lab to improve the performance of the MeRIP-Seq peak caller. She was inspired to use deep learning to investigate the connection between the immune system and cancer. She is eager to explore computational genomics in the Azizi lab! |
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Michael Pressler MS Student Michael is pursuing his MS in Biomedical Engineering. In the past, he majored in Biomedical Engineering and minored in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at George Washington University in DC. At GWU, Michael conducted research and developed a passion for machine learning and artificial and how he can leverage it to create personalized treatment for patients. In the Azizi Lab, Michael hopes to develop this interest further and explore how single-cell data can create better patient treatments and outcomes. |
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Joshua Fuller Undergraduate Student, now Research Assistant Joshua is an undergraduate student in SEAS majoring in Biomedical Engineering and minoring in Computer Science. He is passionate about the intersection of medicine and machine learning and is excited to contribute his time toward its development. In his spare time, he enjoys going to the gym and exploring New York. |
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David Carrera Undergraduate Student David is an undergraduate student studying computer science, specializing in intelligent systems. He is interested in the applications of machine learning and is passionate about blockchain technology. With this background, he hopes to contribute novel machine learning techniques to help better understand the tumor microenvironment. In his free time, he enjoys reading, going out with friends, and playing guitar. |
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Siddhant Sanghi
Undergraduate Student Siddhant (Sid) is an undergraduate student studying Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering. He is excited about working at the confluence of the two fields to create innovative solutions by using knowledge from Biology to bring domain-specific fine-tuning into Machine Learning algorithms and knowledge from Machine Learning to extract richer representations of information than existing rule-based approaches from Biological data and optimise Biological assays. He aspires to work in the space of Computationally informed Biomedical Engineering, to engineer solutions to human disease through novel in-silico based in-vitro approaches to drug discovery. In his free time, he loves to swing dance and be around good music. |
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Kaylee Wanlu Fang Undergraduate Student Kaylee is an undergraduate student studying Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering. She is interested in the intersection of technology and biomedicine, and she is passionate about applying machine learning techniques to advance biomedical research. She aspires to leverage artificial intelligence techniques to improve disease understanding, diagnosis, and treatment. In her free time, she enjoys art, music, and exploring both cities and nature. |
Noa Kalfus
Undergraduate Student
Noa Kalfus
Undergraduate Student
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William O'Brien Undergraduate Student Will is an undergraduate student in SEAS, majoring in applied mathematics and minoring in computer science. He has gained research experience applying machine learning techniques to the field of additive manufacturing at Columbia’s Carleton Lab, as well as in industry research where he focused on reinforcement learning. Will seeks to apply his computational skills to the field of genomics, with a goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of cancer and autoimmune diseases. Besides his academic and research pursuits, Will runs track and field for Columbia. |
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Pistachio Minute taker / Zoom meeting disruptor |
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Udon Note taker / Mood enhancer |
Alumni:
Isha Arora, IICD program Intern, Biomedical Engineering/Computer Science, Cornell University (2022).
Madeline Rohde, High school Intern (2021-2022).
Sopho Kevlishvili, Undergraduate Student (2021-2022).
Pranik Chainani, Visiting student from Statistics and Data Science, Yale University (Summer 2022).
Kaleem Mehdi, Bioforce high school summer internship program (Summer 2022).
Tamjeed Azad, Undergraduate Student (2020-2022); Next position: CS PhD student at Princeton U.
Ruxandra Tonea, Undergraduate Student (2021-2022); Next position: BME PhD student at U Chicago.
James Wang, Undergraduate Student (2021-2022); Next position: Associate Machine Learning Scientist at Atlassian.
Xueer Chen, Postdoctoral Research Scientist (2021-2022); Next position: Senior scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb.
Alex Toberoff, Undergraduate Student (2020-2021); Next position: Researcher at Jump Trading.
Debra Duval, Research Assistant (2021).
Max David Gupta, Undergraduate Student (2021).
Princess Della Tsivor, High School Summer Student (2021); Next position: undergrad at Brown U.
Jose Pomarino Nima, Undergraduate Student (2020-2021).
Lauren Friend, MS Student (2020); Next Position: R&D Engineer at NASA Ames Research Center.
Rachel Africk, High School Summer Student (2020); Next position: undergrad at U Penn SEAS.
Veronica Woldehanna, Undergraduate Student (2019-2020); Next Position: Software Engineer, Microsoft.
We have open positions at all levels! Please see Join Us for more details.
