2022 Young Guts Scholars

Lucy Zhao

MIT

Project: Ingestible, autonomous gastric balloon for long term weight loss, drug delivery, and sensing.

Project Report 6/2023

Goal: Physician-scientist at the intersection of medical device engineering and policy

Hobbies: piano, swimming, cooking

Post-Graduate: Harvard Medical School, MD program 2024

Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA) Award 2024 (highest level of academic excellence)

Andrew Tran

Duke University (Mentor at Stanford)

Project: Hepatocellular carcinoma risk in untreated versus treated chronic hepatitis B patients with indeterminate phase: A multi-center study with inverse probability treatment weighting

Project Report 6/2023

Goal: MD or PhD

Hobbies: Basketball, strength training, Entrepreneurship

Publications: DQ Huang, A Tran et al.  Antiviral therapy substantially reduces hepatocelluar carcinoma risk in chronic Hepatitis B patients in the indeterminate phase.  Hepatology 2023; 78(5):1558-1568

Varun Ponnuasamy

University of Michigan

Project: Mineralocorticoid receptor: a novel tumor suppressor in colorectal cancer

Project Report 6/2023

Goal: MD/PhD

Hobbies: weight lift, cooking

Publications: Mineralocorticoid receptor: a novel tumor suppressor in colorectal cancer. Varun Ponnusamy et al. DDW 2023 Poster Presentation

Daniella Montalvo

University of Michigan

Project: Effect of DUOX2 dysregulation in ulcerative colitis

Project Report 6/2023

Goal: PhD

Hobby: cooking

Publications: The TLR4 antagonist Resatorvid modulates inflammation induced DUOX2 activation. Daniella Montalvo et al. DDW 2023 Oral Presentation

Sohaib Hassan

Rutgers

Project: Effect of epithelial signaling on mesenchyme during tumorigenesis and tissue regeneration

Project Report 6/2023

Goal: PhD in Biomedical Informatics, conducting research on complex diseases including neuromuscular conditions

Hobbies: watching baseball, reading manga

Post Graduate:‍ Stanford University, Biomedical Informatics PhD program 2023

Sarah Chough

Columbia

Project: Deciphering fibroblast-myeloid cell interactions in Pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Goal: MD

Hobbies: piano, cooking, writing