2024 Stanford Bioengineering Siebel Scholars

Five Stanford Bioengineering doctoral students have been named 2024 Siebel Scholars, an honor that recognizes students for their excellence in achievement in academia, research, and leadership. This year’s recipients are Taylor Nguyen, Yi-Hsuan (Andy) Chen, Chew Chai, Netra Unni Rajesh, Andrew Perley.

Siebel Scholars recognizes the most talented students at the world’s leading graduate schools of business, computer science, bioengineering, and energy science, forming an active, lifelong community among an ever-growing group of leaders.

Andrew Perley 

Andrew Perley is a Ph.D. candidate in Bioengineering, advised by Todd Coleman. He spent the first two years of his Ph.D. at UCSD, earning an M.S. in Bioengineering while studying the electrical activity and stimulation of the gastrointestinal system. At Stanford, his research focuses on the electrical coupling of the gut-brain axis and autonomic nervous system. Andrew is both an experimentalist, recording electrical gut-brain data in human subjects to understand interoception and eating disorders, and a methods developer, applying information theoretic methods for rigorous data analysis. He has been supported by the Stanford Data Science Scholars Program, Leaders in Inclusive Teaching Program, and Biophysics T32 award. Passionate about teaching and mentorship, Andrew has served as a Bioengineering TA coordinator for two years, co-instructed BioE 296: Effective and Equitable Teaching in Bioengineering, published in ASEE on course development, and won the Bioengineering Departmental TA award.

Netra Unni

Netra Unni Rajesh is pursuing a Ph.D. in Bioengineering in Joseph DeSimone’s laboratory at Stanford University. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science, specializing in Biomedical Engineering. Netra works at the intersection of materials science, drug delivery and immunology to design novel platforms for transdermal drug delivery and diagnostics. Through research internships at the Koch Institute at MIT and the MEMS Lab at Caltech, she developed technologies for cancer drug delivery and vaccine production. Netra volunteers as an engineering ambassador, conducting lab tours and research workshops for students in different academic phases - from elementary school to community college. An advocate for STEM outreach, she has done a TEDx talk titled, “Why students need science and technology.” Netra is a Knight-Hennessy scholar and was awarded both the U of T Student Leadership Award and 3M National Student Fellowship for her efforts.

Taylor Nguyen 

Taylor Nguyen is a Bioengineering Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in Professor KC Huang’s lab. Her goal is to understand the ecological determinants that govern how bacterial communities assemble in the gut microbiome. She has engineered communities by harnessing bacteriophages to specifically eliminate single species. Phage editing enables the systematic interrogation to understand the role of a single species within a complex community. Her research has been supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Stanford EDGE Fellowship. Taylor is passionate about mentoring and uplifting young scientists from underserved communities. She served as a research mentor through Stanford’s Racial Equity to Advance a Community of Health (REACH) Postbaccalaureate Program and a program leader for Stanford’s Summer Research Program (SSRP)-Amgen Scholars Program. Before this, Taylor received her M.S. and B.S. in Bioengineering from Stanford and worked as a research technician with Professor Hana El-Samad at UCSF.

Andy Yi-Hsuan Chen

Andy Yi-Hsuan Chen is an interdisciplinary physician-scientist and a Ph.D. candidate in Bioengineering at Stanford University, advised by Dr. Ansuman Satpathy. His primary goal is to combine his expertise in medicine and bioengineering to advance global healthcare and therapeutics through scientific and business innovation. He is dedicated to applying genome-scale technologies to study immune system principles in infection and cancer, with a focus on improving immunotherapies through single-cell genomics and CRISPR-based approaches. His work has been published in top journals including Nature and Cell. In addition to his academic roles, Andy is an active community builder and has taken leadership roles in various organizations such as the Stanford Advanced Degree Candidate Consulting Club, the Stanford Biotechnology Club, and the Stanford Taiwanese Student Association. He was also selected for the Botha Chan Innovation Program at Stanford GSB to investigate product launch strategies for a medical device. Andy holds an M.S. in Bioengineering from Stanford University, and an M.D. and B.S. in Physics from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.

Chew Chai 

Chew is a Ph.D. candidate in Bioengineering at Stanford University, advised by Prof. Bo Wang. Her research focuses on understanding how cells collectively evolve and adapt to fit the need of an animal using flatworm and cephalopod models. She is also passionate about building low-cost tools to make disease diagnostics and science more accessible. Her notable contribution includes hand-powered paper centrifuge and low-cost microscopy tools for tracking free-moving animal behaviors. Apart from research, Chew enjoys teaching and mentoring. She has served as a TA for three undergraduate and graduate Bioengineering courses, and has mentored seven undergraduate and high school students. Her graduate education is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Stanford SGF Fellowship, and Stanford DARE fellowship. Before this, Chew received her B.S in Chemistry from MIT.