2020 Fellows
Ethan Ashby

Ethan Ashby is a rising senior mathematics major and biology minor at Pomona College from Orinda, California. His academic interests include the statistical analysis of molecular and ecological data, literature, and creative writing. Ethan is an athlete on Pomona’s Cross Country and Track teams and was a scoring member of the first men’s National Championship team in his school’s history. In his spare time, Ethan enjoys running, bicycling, listening to Playboi Carti, birdwatching, making DIY electronic music, writing short-stories, curating content for his team’s instagram page, and zooming with his friends
Project: Using metafeature clustering and smoothed Good-Turing probability estimation to mine tissue-specific signals from rare variants in the cancer genome
Joseph Mogrovejo

Joseph Mogrovejo is a rising senior majoring in statistics and psychology at Hunter College. He plans on pursuing a career in quantitative psychology to allow him to study psychometrics and the way mental disorders are measured. Joseph enjoys making acrylic paintings, sculpting, playing with his dogs, and traveling around New York City.
Project: Validating self-efficacy in a study of ethnically diverse breast cancer patients using factor analysis
Madelaine Rangel

Madelaine Rangel is a rising senior in the Biometry and Statistics major at Cornell University. Her hometown is in Jericho, New York but Madelaine recently moved to Elmhurst, Queens. She is working with Dr. JJ Gao and Ino de Bruijn in the Computational Oncology Department. Their project involves properly identifying splice events in cBioPortal genomic data. Madelaine hopes to pursue graduate studies in biostatistics with a focus on clinical trials. In her free time, she enjoys watching Netflix and drinking hot chocolate. After quarantine, Madelaine hopes to travel and take advantage of her scuba diving certification.
Project: Identifying Splice Events That Contribute to Tumor Initialization and Progression Using Recurrence
Breanna Richards

Breanna Richards is a rising senior majoring in Statistics at Amherst College and is from West Orange, New Jersey. In her spare time, she enjoys singing, dancing, and trying out new restaurants with her friends. She hopes to pursue graduate studies in biostatistics and epidemiology.
Project: Classification in Lymphatic Cancer
Soyi Sarkar

Soyi Sarkar is a rising senior at Washington University in St. Louis studying mathematics and biology. She is from Short Hills, NJ. Soyi is interested in medical journalism, and volunteering for underserved populations. In her free time, she loves to paint, do crossword puzzles and trying new restaurants.
Project: Predicting Recurrence of Liver Metastases and Overall Survival in Colorectal Cancer Patients
Kinnary Shah

Kinnary Shah is a rising senior at Rutgers University - New Brunswick, pursuing a double major in Biomathematics and Public Health. She is from central New Jersey. Kinnary serves as President of Kier’s Kidz at Rutgers, which is affiliated with a local non-profit that advocates for children battling pediatric cancers, and a member of the Rutgers Global Health Institute. In her free time, she enjoys baking, attending concerts, and reading. She plans to pursue graduate studies in biostatistics.
Project: Batch Effects in microRNA from the TCGA database
Evan Steinberg

Evan Steinberg is a rising senior at American University in Washington D.C. studying Statistics. Originally from Newtown, PA, in his spare time, Evan enjoys doing theatre, outdoor activities like hiking, and spending time with friends. After finishing his undergraduate work, Evan looks forward to pursuing graduate work in Biostatistics.
Project: Sensitivity and Specificity in a repeated measure setting
Amelia Tran

Amelia Tran is a rising senior at Mount Holyoke College. She is interested in applications of statistics in the field of healthcare. She plans to pursue graduate studies in Data Science. Amelia is from Hanoi, Vietnam. In her spare time, she enjoys reading books, listening to music, and exploring different cultures.
Project: Joint model for longitudinal and survival data: A study of Primary Biliary Cirrhosis
Gaby Zuckerman

Gaby Zuckerman is a rising senior at UNC Chapel Hill studying biostatistics with a math minor and is from Daytona Beach, FL. She plans on pursuing a graduate degree in epidemiology in order to combat health disparities and make health more accessible for everyone. In her free time, she likes playing board games, watching TV, and being around animals.
Project: Understanding Differences in Prescription Drug Use Between Mexican Americans and Non-Hispanic White Americans: Results from the NHANES Study
2019 Fellows
Tony Chen

Tony Chen is a rising senior at Princeton University, studying Operations Research and Financial Engineering, and is from Germantown, TN. He hopes to pursue a career in biostatistics research, and enjoys dancing and playing the piano on the side.
Project: Characterizing Longitudinal Breast Imaging Features in CT Scans
Hannah Fuchs

Hannah is a public health and applied statistics double major at American University in Washington, DC. Last year, she studied abroad in Nairobi, Kenya, which piqued her interest in international health disparities affecting those with chronic diseases. In her free time, she enjoys painting, photography, and playing music on her college radio show.
Project: Understanding the association between B12 vitamin intake and B12 blood levels: The role of smoking and gender.
Hector Moran

Mentor: Yuelin Li
Hector Moran is a rising senior majoring in bioinformatics & Afro/Latino studies at Hunter College. He plans on pursuing a career in biostatistics with the hope of applying rigorous methodology and analysis to health disparities research, while also incorporating anti-racism into science. Hector enjoys r&b music, cooking, reading fiction, and watching Marvel movies.
Project: Sample Selection Model in a Smoking Cessation Missing Data Analysis
Amy Pitts

Mentor: Sujata Patil
Amy is a rising senior at Marist College double majoring in Applied Mathematics and Data Analytics while minoring in Computer Science. Along with her heavy course load, she is the treasurer of the Marist College Equestrian team, the President of the Association for Women in Mathematics chapter and Pi Mu Epsilon chapter at Marist, and the Vice-President of the Marist Math Club. She is extremely excited to explore her interests in math and data science at MSK while living in a big city.
Project: Missing Data in Cancer Studies

Mohammed Rahman
Mentor: Aaron Mitchell
Mohammed is a senior at Hunter College and is from Queens, NY. He is interested in applying machine learning methods for cancer research. His goal is to perform research that forwards clinical practices in oncology. He enjoys listening to music and watching sci-fi movies. After a few years working in a healthcare setting, he looks forward to applying for a Ph.D. in Biostatistics.
Project: Increasing Financial Payments from Industry to Medical Oncologists in the United States, 2014-2017

Allison Reiner
Mentor: Kay See Tan
Allison attends college in upstate New York, near the Canadian border (St. Lawrence University). She spent the spring semester studying abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she lived with a Danish host family. She really enjoy traveling and exploring new places. Allison hopes to attend graduate school in biostatistics upon finishing her undergraduate degree.
Project: Relationship between Immune Markers and Overall Survival in NSCLC Patients

Yixuan (Sherry) Wu
Mentor: Jaya Satagopan
Yixuan (Sherry) Wu is a rising junior in Georgetown University, majoring in Psychology and Mathematics on the statistics track. She works as a research assistant in Georgetown’s Math and Stats department and plans to pursue graduate studies in Statistics. Sherry enjoys playing the piano in the university’s chamber music group, horseback riding, travelling, and watching sports.
Project: Modeling Survival Data

Crystal Zang
Mentor: Ed Reznik
Crystal studies Mathematics, Statistical & Data Science at Smith College. She is interested in solving biomedical problems using machine learning. She plans to pursue graduate studies in Biostatistics. She is from Shanghai, China. One of her career goals is to research women’s health and raise awareness of women’s health issues in China. She also enjoys dancing salsa.
Project: Prediction of Unmeasured Features in Metabolomics Data Across Cancer Types

Sunny Zhong
Mentor: Venkat Seshan
Sunny is a rising senior at Cornell University, majoring in Human Biology and minoring in Health Policy. With the plan to pursue graduate studies, she hopes to contribute to biostatistics research with applications to medicine and health disparity. She is from New York City, and enjoys cooking, trying out new food spots, and studying in cozy cafes.
Project: Determinants of Dose Modifications in the Treatment of Liver Metastases

Xiaobin Zhou
Mentor: Margaret Du
Xiaobin is a junior at Agnes Scott College, majoring in Public Health and Math, and minoring in music. She is interested in molecular epidemiology in cancer research. She wants to pursue a PhD in biostatistics or epidemiology, and become a global health researcher and practitioner. In her spare time, she likes travelling, tennis and playing the violin.
Project: Association between tooth loss and cancer mortality: NHANES 1999-2015
2018 Fellows
Nicholas Hartman

Mentor: Sara Olson
Project: Age at onset of pancreatic cancer in relation to risk factors
David Hong

Mentor: Allison Snyderman
Project: Measures of hospitals’ quality: how do they relate?
Elly Kipkogei

Mentor: Audrey Mauguen
Project: Simulation study of variable selection methods for survival analysis
Chase Latour

Mentor: Margaret Du
Project Title: Association Between Age at Last Birth and Maternal Telomere Length
Christine Lin

Mentor: Malcom Pike
Project Title: Mammographic background parenchymal enhancement and risk of breast cancer
Antara Mondal

Mentor: Elizabeth Kantor
Project Title: Association Between Use of Fish Oil Supplements and Inflammation
Margaret Steiner

Mentor: Venkat Seshan
Project Title: Estimating tumor fraction from shallow whole genome sequencing
Srinivas Sunil

Mentor: Zhigang Zhang, Debra Goldman
Project Title: Statistical Analysis of Cancer Data from Radiation Oncology
Sarah Szvetecz

Mentor: Li-Xuan Qin
Project Title: Exploring different link functions of hierarchical clustering and their sensitivity to handling effects in microarray data
Aijin Wang

Mentor: Ronglai Shen
Project Title: Applying statistical machine learning methods to cancer genomics