Dr. Megan Bair-Merritt
Dr. Bair-Merritt is a Professor of Pediatrics and is a multi-PI of the BU CTSI. She is a general pediatrician and child health services researcher who has conducted social epidemiology and intervention research in the area of family violence for over 15 years. She has published 95 scientific and/or invited articles, 14 letters/editorials, and 10 book chapters that predominantly focus on family violence and child health. She has received three R01-level awards as PI (and 3 additional awards as Co-I) from the National Institute of Justice and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (federal funding for violence research generally comes from non-NIH institutes), an AHRQ T32 training grant, and multiple large foundation grants. She also serves as the Executive Director of Pediatrics’ Center for the Urban Child and Healthy Family and as Chair of Women’s Leadership through the Boston University Medical Group’s Office of Equity, Vitality, and Inclusion. Her scholarly work has moved forward the field’s understanding of how intimate partner violence (IPV) affects children, influenced how IPV screening and related interventions are implemented in the medical setting, and shaped conceptualizations of relationships with teen dating violence. Her publications have been cited in critical policy pieces and clinical guidelines including the Institute of Medicine’s consensus report Clinical Preventive Services for Women: Closing the Gaps, the World Health Organization’s Guidelines for Prevention and Clinical Intervention for Female Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence, the United States Preventive Services Task Force’s recommendation for Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse of Elderly and Vulnerable Adults: Screening, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines on IPV screening in the pediatric setting. She recently was invited to present about IPV homicide at the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Workshop on Firearm Injuries and Death.
Kayhan Batmanghelich, PhD
Dr. Batmanghelich is an Assistant Professor of Department of Biomedical Informatics and Intelligent Systems Program at the University of Pittsburgh and an adjunct faculty in the Machine Learning Department at the Carnegie Mellon University. His research is at the intersection of medical vision, machine learning, and bioinformatics. He develops algorithms to analyze and understand medical image along with genetic data and other electrical health records such as the clinical report. He is interested in method development as well as translational clinical problems.
Dr. David Center
Dr. Center is the Gordon and Ruth Snider Professor of Pulmonary Medicine, Associate Provost for Translational Research, and Director of the BU Clinical and Translational Science Institute. For 36 years, he has been the Chief of the Pulmonary, Allergy, Sleep, and Critical Care Division having added Allergy and Sleeps accreditation to the program during his tenure. In that position, he supervises 50 MD and PhD clinical and research faculty and over 20 post-doctoral fellows in 3 major research areas (Health Sciences Research and Informatics, Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and Lung Inflammation and Immunity). He is a co-discoverer of Interleukin-16 which is the topic of BU-owned intellectual property licensed by multiple bioscience companies. He has been the PI of R01, P50, P01, UL, U54, U19, and T32 grants and the mentor for 8 K08s. He is the Founding Director of the Boston University Clinical and Translational Science Institute since its inception in 2008 and the PI of its NCATS-sponsored Clinical and Translational Science Award.
Christopher Chen MD PhD
Dr. Chen is the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University, Founding Director of the Biological Design Center, and Core Faculty of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Dr. Chen has been an instrumental figure in the development of engineered cellular microenvironments to understand and control how cells build tissues. He is using these insights to engineer biomimetic cultures to model human tissues, physiology, and disease, as well as to engineer new approaches for regenerative medicine. He serves as Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center in Cellular Metamaterials and Co-PI of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Engineering Mechanobiology. He is an Allen Distinguished Investigator, a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and is a member of the Faculty of 1000. He received his A.B. in Biochemistry from Harvard, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from M.I.T., Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from the Harvard-M.I.T. Health Sciences and Technology Program, and M.D. from the Harvard Medical School.
Huimin Cheng, PhD
Dr. Cheng is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Boston University. She was awarded the Rafik B. Hariri Junior Faculty Fellow in 2024. She received her Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Georgia in 2023. Her methodological research focuses on statistical network analysis, graph deep learning, causal inference, machine learning, and Riemannian geometry.
“My research is highly interdisciplinary. My methodological research focuses on statistical network analysis, graph deep learning, causal inference, machine learning, and Riemannian geometry. I modeled the generating process of a network from both non-parametric (e.g., graphon model) and parametric (e.g., SBM) perspectives. I have developed various methods, including network cross-validation, network sampling, network ANOVA, and graphon convolutional network. I also work closely with biophysicists, engineers, computer scientists, political scientists, public health scientists, and sociologists to solve scientific problems arising from various disciplines. (1) Single-molecule and nanotechnology research. We analyzed single-molecule force spectroscopy data to reveal the binding modes in intermolecular analysis. The proposed method paves a revolutionary path to the massive production and fully automated system for precise intermolecular analysis, such as the interaction between transcription factors and DNA. (2) Political science research. We analyzed how the transnational advocacy network simultaneously provides social power and exacerbates global inequalities. (3) Smart grid research. We applied network methods to detect and localize anomalies in smart grids. (4) Public health and Bioinformatics research. I developed various methods to promote data analytics in gastric cancer, obstructive sleep apnea, and coronary heart disease. Recently, I have been particularly interested in developing methods for spatial transcriptomics, including spatial domain segmentation. (5) Smart cities research. We analyzed transportation networks to promote the smart city.”
Darrell N. Kotton, MD
Dr. Kotton is the founding director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine of Boston University and Boston Medical Center. He is a physician-scientist with attending physician duties in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Boston Medical Center and is the David C. Seldin Professor in the department of medicine and in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Boston University Chobanian and Avedesian School of Medicine. Dr. Kotton is an Allen Distinguished Investigator, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised program of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. He is also an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigators and the Association of American Physicians. He leads a basic research laboratory, funded continuously by the NIH since 2004, focused on lung regeneration and stem cell biology, and he serves on the NIH’s National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s Board of External Experts. He is the recipient of the American Thoracic Society’s “Recognition Award for Scientific Accomplishments” (2018), the AAMC inaugural national “Research Resources Sharing Award” (2017), the Alpha-1 Foundation’s “Researcher of the Year” (2013) and “Shillelagh” (2010) Awards, Boston University’s Graduate Medical Sciences Educator of the Year Award (2018), and the Robert Dawes Evans Senior Research Mentor Award from Boston University.
Expertise: Stem Cell Biology; iPS cells; Reprogramming; Gene Therapy; Lung Developmental Biology.
Finn Hawkins, MBBCh
Dr. Hawkins is a physician-scientist focused on the molecular mechanisms of lung regeneration including the leveraging the stem cell properties of airway basal cells for cell-based gene-therapies. Dr. Hawkins pioneered the development of iPSC directed differentiation strategies to lung epithelial cells. Dr. Hawkins is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine physician, and director of the Interstitial Lung Disease clinic at Boston University Medical Center. Dr. Hawkins completed medical school, internal medicine training and fellowship training at the University of Galway (Ireland), Mayo Clinic (Rochester MN) and Boston University, respectively. Dr. Hawkins long term vision is to develop curative strategies for individuals with genetic lung diseases.
Vijaya B. Kolachalama PhD
Dr. Kolachalama is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine & Computer Science at Boston University. Before joining BU, he was a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Draper Laboratory and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Edelman Laboratory at MIT, where he also served as an ORISE Fellow at the US Food & Drug Administration. His laboratory focuses on biomedical machine vision, multimodal representation learning, and domain generalization, with various medical applications. His team is particularly interested in developing software frameworks based on generalist AI principles to assist clinical practitioners in real-world settings. His work has been published in prestigious journals including Brain, Cell, Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Circulation, Neurology and Science Translational Medicine. His research is supported by grants from the American Heart Association, National Institutes of Health, the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust, Gates Ventures, Artificial Intelligence and Technology Collaboratories at NIA, and Johnson & Johnson Enterprise Innovation. Dr. Kolachalama is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Fellow of the American Heart Association, actively working with industry and investment communities to translate software technologies to the clinic.
Valerie Gouon-Evans,PhD, PharmD
Dr. Gouon-Evans is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and Center for Regenerative Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, Boston Medical Center. She is the Director of the Boston University Liver Biologist (BULB) program and Co-director of the Molecular and Translational Medicine PhD program in the Department of Medicine at BU.
The Gouon-Evans Lab has greatly contributed to the efficient generation of hepatocytes from mouse, human and macaque pluripotent stem cells, and specifically pioneered the use of BMP4 to induce hepatic specification, an approach now utilized widely in the pluripotent stem cell field. Since Dr. Gouon-Evans lab moved to Boston University Boston Medical Center in 2017, her research interests have aimed to translate her developmental discoveries to harness liver regeneration. Gouon-Evans Lab is currently developing strategies to treat various liver diseases such as developing cell transplantation strategies to repopulate diseased liver mouse models, promoting intrinsic liver regeneration by harnessing hepatocyte regeneration or inducing differentiation of cholangiocytes into healthy hepatocytes. All these projects utilize nucleoside modified mRNA complexed to lipid nanoparticles, a technology that her lab has optimized and validated to induce transient yet robust expression of proteins in the liver to accelerate liver regeneration.
Andrew J. Henderson, PhD
Research in Dr. Henderson’s laboratory focuses on the cellular mechanisms regulating HIV replication and transcription. Current projects explore the role of signaling in HIV infection and latency, the impact of persistent HIV infection on chronic comorbidities, and the mechanisms contributing to HIV-associated inflammation.
Beyond research, Dr. Henderson is actively involved in undergraduate and graduate training and currently serves as the co-Director of the BU PREP post-baccalaureate program. Additionally, Dr. [Name] has played a key role in organizing and participating in international training programs, including a summer program with the University of Dammam in Saudi Arabia, a short course at Makerere University in Uganda, and a Fogarty International Center training grant with the University of Liberia.
Ioannis Paschalidis, PhD
Dr. Paschalidis is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering, and Founding Professor of Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University. He is the Director of the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. He obtained a Diploma (1991) from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and an M.S. (1993) and a Ph.D. (1996) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), all in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His current research interests lie in the fields of optimization, control, stochastic systems, robust learning, computational medicine, and computational biology. He has published a monograph and more than 300 refereed papers in these topics, and he has been the primary advisor to 37 Ph.D. theses. His work has been recognized with a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, several best paper awards, and an IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge Award. His work on health informatics won an IEEE Computer Society Crowd Sourcing Prize and a best paper award by the International Medical Informatics Associations (IMIA). He was an invited participant at the 2002 Frontiers of Engineering Symposium organized by the National Academy of Engineering, and at the 2014 National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAFKI) Conference. He is a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control), and the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association. He is distinguished member of the IEEE Control Systems Society. From 2013 to 2019 he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and he is the General Co-Chair of the 2025 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
Katya Ravid, DSc
Dr. Ravid, Barbara E. Corkey Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Biology, Health Sciences, is the founding director of the Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research (ECIBR) and of a university-wide Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Office (BU IBRO). She is also the Director of the Team Science Program within BU CTSI, and of an American Heart Association (AHA)-funded Center on Cardio-Oncology. Through her leadership roles, she developed platforms for cross-campus interdisciplinary biomedical research- the Affinity Research Collaboratives (ARCs), with documented success at discovery, publications and grant seeking levels. Dr. Ravid is also the founder and past Scientific Director of the BU Transgenic/Knockout Core, the director of an NHLBI-funded training program in Cardiovascular Biology, and the developer and current director of an interdisciplinary Master of Science program in Biological Core Technologies. While leading university initiatives and continuing teaching responsibilities, Dr. Ravid has maintained a creative research program continuously funded by NIH, the AHA and Biotech. Her pioneering work, along with that of over 60 pre- and post-docs and junior faculty she has guided and mentored, led to recognized discoveries in the fields of hematopoiesis and platelet/vascular biology. With her work being recognized nationally and internationally, Dr. Ravid has been the recipient of several awards such as the prestigious Fulbright Research Scholar Award, the AHA Established Investigator Award, the University of Sidney International Scholarship Award, the Weizmann Institute Professorship Visiting Award, the Robert Dawson Evans Teaching Award and the Educator of the Year Award in Graduate Medical Sciences, among other recognitions. She has served on several national and international review panels, and chaired scientific sessions such as the Gordon Research Conference on Megakaryocyte and Platelet Cell Biology.
Angie Serrano PhD
Dr. Serrano’s research program at BU aims to develop pioneering work toward understanding shared cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodevelopment and vasculogenesis in the context of rare diseases with an epigenetic basis. Examples of these are Kabuki Syndrome, caused by pathogenic variants in the KMT2D gene, and KAT6-related disorders. Dr. Serrano created the stable null KMT2D zebrafish mutant line and fully characterized multiple novel cardiovascular phenotypes for the first time in zebrafish. In addition, her work led to her discovery that KMT2D directly modulates Notch signaling and that some of the Kabuki Syndrome phenotypes can be alleviated by controlling levels of the Notch pathway. Her research interest focuses on studying non-canonical epigenetic mechanisms regulating neuronal differentiation and blood vessel patterning. This is specifically during cell differentiation, migration, and cell cycle progression. To reach this goal, Dr. Serrano combines her expertise in rare disease modeling in zebrafish, cardiovascular and neurobiology techniques, and human iPSC-derived nervous system organoids. One of Dr. Serrano’s goals is to bridge the gap between basic research, clinicians, and patients by building a research network that will encourage interdisciplinary collaborations in the field of rare diseases. Her work in the field of rare diseases, commitment to mentoring, and advocacy for diversity, equity, and inclusion are critical elements of Dr. Serrano’s professional goals and lab vision.
Christopher W. Shanahan, MD, MPH FACP
Dr. Shanahan is a General internist with a focus on Primary Care Internal Medicine and Addiction. He is Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine. He is the Faculty Lead for Research Networking for Boston University’s Clinical Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI) and serves on its Senior Executive Committee and its Clinical Informatics unit. His research focus includes: chronic pain management, substance use disorders, community-based research networks, and research informatics and application development to improve medical care quality and eliminate health disparities in underserved urban populations.
Kim Vanuytsel, PhD
Dr. Vanuytsel is a stem cell biologist with expertise in developmental hematopoiesis, sickle cell disease and hematopoietic stem cell biology. She is originally from Belgium and obtained her PhD from KULeuven (Leuven, Belgium). She subsequently joined the laboratory of George Murphy at the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) for her postdoctoral work. Since joining the research community at Boston University and Boston Medical Center, she has focused on developing tools and resources that help us understand important concepts in hematopoietic development with the goal of translating this knowledge into the realization of the immense potential that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and hematopoietic stem cells hold for disease modeling and regenerative medicine.
As part of the Center of Excellence in Sickle Cell Disease here at Boston Medical Center, serving a large and diverse sickle cell disease patient population, Dr. Vanuytsel is committed to finding better solutions for these patients. Leading her research lab, embedded within the CReM, her goal is to continue to focus on issues at the intersection of stem cell biology, cell therapies and sickle cell disease. Her experience in these diverse but complimentary research fields, has equipped Dr. Vanuytsel with a unique perspective and skillset to make meaningful contributions to emerging therapies for sickle cell disease patients, ranging from gene therapy to more globally accessible small molecule fetal hemoglobin inducers.
Elisha Wachman, MD
Dr. Wachman is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University (BU) Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Vice Chair for Research, Department of Pediatrics, and attending neonatologist at Boston Medical Center (BMC). Dr. Wachman is the Co-Director of the BU CTSI Pilot Grant Program. She is an internationally recognized leader in Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (NOWS) and substance use disorders (SUDs) in pregnancy, conducting innovative clinical and translational research and leading quality improvement interventions.
Her research has included the investigation of optimal pharmacologic treatment regimens for infants with NOWS, optimal approaches to the pharmacologic treatment of pregnant persons with OUD, clinical, genetic, and epigenetic markers of NOWS outcomes, and the examination of long-term childhood outcomes after prenatal opioid exposure. She is currently the principal investigator (PI) on multiple federal and foundation grants related to the treatment of pregnant individuals with OUD, placental epigenetic markers for NOWS, and longitudinal projects examining childhood outcomes after prenatal opioid exposure.
Andrew A. Wilson MD
Dr. Wilson is a Pulmonary and Critical Care physician with a long-standing focus on regenerative medicine and stem cell biology. A major aspect of Dr. wilson’s research program involves the application of patient-derived stem cells to model gene-environment interactions that contribute to lung and liver disease.
As a key member of the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) at Boston University and Boston Medical Center, Dr. Wilson leads efforts to compile and oversee several repositories of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and associated blood samples. These repositories include samples from patients with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD), a genetic lung and liver disease, as well as a large collection linked to highly characterized participants in Boston University’s Framingham Heart Study.
Through this work, Dr. Wilson and his team aim to advance the understanding of disease mechanisms and develop innovative therapeutic approaches in pulmonary and liver medicine.
🏆 Kevin Chen – 1st Place
🏆 Varuna Jasodanand – 1st Place
🥉 KathrynAnn Odamah – 3rd Place
🥉 Braden Pate – 3rd Place
