The Brown University Biomedical Engineering program is proud to share that five of the eight School of Engineering awardees for this years National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship were concentrators or are trainees in Biomedical Engineering. Brown University Engineering seniors Julia Patterson and Kailee Tanaka, graduate student Isaac Díaz Becdach, and recent alumni Mayayi Izzo ’24, and Seo-Ho Lee ’25.
The GRFP is one of the nation's most prestigious fellowship programs, providing three years of financial support, over five years, to graduate students who have demonstrated potential for significant achievements in research. Offer recipients were selected from a highly competitive pool of nearly 14,000 applicants nationwide, representing all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, based on their intellectual merit and broader impacts, including the potential to contribute to scientific innovation.
Congratulations to all the awardees!
Current Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student Awardees:
Isaac Díaz Becdach is currently pursuing a biomedical engineering Ph.D. at Brown in Professor Theresa Raimondo’s research group. He is interested in harnessing epitranscriptomics to develop more potent and stable RNA therapeutics while optimizing lipid nanoparticle delivery vehicles using machine learning. This research has applications in targeted cancer immunotherapy for primary and metastatic lesions, and in increasing RNA shelf-life stability. Having witnessed how a lack of therapeutic access can accelerate cancer progression in his own family, Díaz Becdach aims to reduce cold chain reliance, which currently prevents novel RNA cancer therapeutics from reaching the world’s most vulnerable populations. While at Brown, Díaz Becdach has been immersed in the entrepreneurship ecosystem through NSF-iCorps & Brown Technology Innovations, and culturally through the Latinx Graduate Collective. Additionally, he served as a teaching assistant for ENGN 1110 Transport and Biotransport Processes and ENGN 1490 Biomaterials. Before Brown, Díaz Becdach worked as a technical associate at MIT and the Broad Institute in Dr. Robert Langer and Dr. Giovanni Traverso’s research groups, developing mRNA drug delivery devices, which led to Nature and Nature Nanotechnology publications. He graduated with a bachelor’s of science in chemical engineering from the University of South Florida.
Current Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Student Awardees:
Julia Patterson ’26 is a senior biomedical engineer whose research focuses on improving drug delivery systems through biomaterials to enhance disease treatment and patient outcomes. For the past three years, she has conducted research in Professor Anita Shukla’s Biomaterials Lab, where she developed nanoparticle-based therapies to treat Staphylococcus infections. In addition to her research, Julia has served as a teaching assistant for ENGN 0720 Thermodynamics and ENGN 0810 Fluid Mechanics, and has tutored MATH 0200 Multivariable Calculus for three years. She has also been actively involved in mentorship and outreach, serving as a peer advisor with the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program, leading events with the Biomedical Engineering Society and the Engineering Departmental Undergraduate Group, and volunteering as a physics tutor at Hope High School. Outside the classroom, Patterson is a captain of the Brown Women’s Club Lacrosse team. She is a recipient of a UTRA fellowship in Shukla’s lab and previously interned at Sanofi in the Global Clinical Immunology department. After graduating this May, Patterson will pursue her Ph.D. in bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
Kailee Tanaka ’26 is a senior at Brown studying biomedical engineering. In Professor Anita Shukla’s lab, her research focuses on developing a drug delivery system for bone regeneration in osteoporosis patients. Over the summers, she has done research on vascularizing kidney organoids through an NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and interned in Sanofi’s early drug discovery department. Outside of research, she is the treasurer for Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, the Pharmaceutical Head for Brown Healthcare Investment Group, a communications intern, and has been a teaching assistant for ENGN1110 Transport and Biotransport Processes, ENGN1230 Instrumentation Design, BIOL0500 Cellular and Molecular Biology, and CHEM0100 Introductory Chemistry. After graduating this May, Tanaka will pursue her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Tufts University.
Recent Biomedical Engineering Alumni Awardees:
Mayayi Izzo ’24 is currently a technician in the Teplensky Lab at Boston University, working on modulating immune responses using nanomaterials. This fall, she will begin pursuing a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Vanderbilt University, joining the Chapman Lab to conduct research focused on B cell therapeutics. As an undergraduate at Brown, Izzo concentrated in biomedical engineering and completed her honor’s thesis in Professor Anita Shukla’s lab on developing targeted nanoparticles to combat bacterial infections. Outside of research, she was involved in the student organizations China Care Brown and Brown Alzheimer’s Activists.
Seo-Ho Lee ’25 is a first-year Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering at Cornell, working under Professor Shuibing Chen to develop organoid disease models. As an undergraduate at Brown, Lee was a member of Professor Patrycja Dubielecka-Szczerba’s hematology/oncology laboratory, where she investigated how the bone marrow stromal microenvironment can provide a protective niche for acute myeloid leukemia cells. These characteristics could provide predictive biomarkers for patient-specific responses to acute myeloid leukemia chemotherapy. Outside of the lab, Lee was a teaching assistant for ENGN 1490 Biomaterials and ENGN 1110 Transport and Biotransport Processes. She also served as the Volunteer Co-Director and Event Supervisor for Brown University Science Olympiad. Lee also created a research internship through the Dubielecka Lab, where she mentored a Providence high school student pursuing firsthand research experience. Outside of Brown, she was an intern for BioBus, an organization that provides hands-on science education for K-12 students throughout New England.