Projects

Newly Identified Chromatin-Remodeling Pathway in the Lens Enables a Proof-of-Concept Genetic Therapy for PCO
Newly Identified Chromatin-Remodeling Pathway in the Lens Enables a Proof-of-Concept Genetic Therapy for PCO
ISEF 2025 · 3rd Grand Award, Biomedical & Health Sciences

Using DPP4 inhibitors as a probe, we elucidate a novel chromatin remodeling pathway in the lens driving EMT during posterior capsule opacification, then exploited it to design a CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapy that replicates the topological effect without the drug's cytotoxicity.

Conditional VAE-Based Representation Learning Pipeline for Trajectory Analysis of BDNF Concentration and Behavioral Outcomes Post-Pediatric TBI
Conditional VAE-Based Representation Learning Pipeline for Trajectory Analysis of BDNF Concentration and Behavioral Outcomes Post-Pediatric TBI
UPMC Children's Hospital

Created an easy-to-use pipeline via conditional VAEs to learn latent features present within trajectories of brain-derived neurotrophic factor measurements in pediatric patients. Determined that trajectories were able to correlate to behavioral outcomes post-injury. Pipeline used in multiple NIH-funded studies at UPMC Children's Hospital.

High-Throughput Detection of Risk Factors to Sudden Cardiac Arrest in Youth Athletes
High-Throughput Detection of Risk Factors to Sudden Cardiac Arrest in Youth Athletes
arXiv 2024

A screening pipeline that uses an Apple Watch as a 12-lead ECG; We developed a regression model to upscale 4-lead data to 12 leads, and a transformer auto-encoder to classify beats at 95.3% sensitivity and 99.1% specificity, outperforming physicians and SOTA algos on the same dataset.