Five Stanford Bioengineering Students Named 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. The graduate students are counted among 83 distinguished honorees advancing research across disciplines. This year’s recipients are Michaela Hinks, Ali Kight, Gwanggyu Sun, Xianghao Zhan, and Gustavo Ramon Chau Loo Kung.
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. Each year, exceptional students are selected as Siebel Scholars based on academic excellence and leadership potential. Each receives a $35,000 award toward their final year of graduate studies. Founded in 2000, there are over 1,800 Siebel Scholars today.
Michaela Hinks
Michaela Hinks is a Ph.D. candidate in Bioengineering at Stanford University, co-advised by Drs. Lacramioara Bintu and William Greenleaf. Her primary goal is to build quantitative biophysical models of human gene regulation from first principles. To this end, she develops next-generation sequencing and synthetic biology tools to measure and manipulate gene expression at single molecule resolution. Michaela is passionate about teaching and mentoring: she has served as a TA for three quantitative undergraduate and graduate Bioengineering courses and earned the Centennial TA award for excellence in teaching, one of Stanford's highest teaching honors. Her graduate education is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Stanford EDGE Fellowship, and the Gabilan Stanford Graduate Fellowship. Before this, Michaela received her B.S. in Bioengineering from Stanford University in 2017 and interned at Google X.
Ali Kight
Ali is a Ph.D. Candidate in Bioengineering, conducting research at the intersection of medicine and mechanical design under Professor Mark Cutkosky in the Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab (BDML). Collaborating with the Cardiovascular Engineering Research Lab (Ma Lab) in the School of Medicine, her research primarily focuses on developing highly durable, implantable soft electronics to detect cardiac diseases and enable remote patient monitoring for high-risk heart failure patients. Ali is also the founder of TINA Healthcare, a company dedicated to creating inclusive menstrual health products suitable for individuals of all abilities and sizes. Ali is passionate about needs-driven innovation to improve global health and wellness, with a specific interest in supporting vulnerable populations. Ali is recognized as an Accel Leadership Fellow through the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. She holds an M.S. in Bioengineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Gustavo Ramon Chau Loo Kung
Gustavo Chau Loo Kung was born in Chiclayo, Peru. He received his bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering in 2012 and his master’s degree in Digital Signal and Image Processing in 2017. During his master’s, he performed research in ultrasound beamforming and from 2017 to 2018, he was a research assistant working in mathematical optimization. In 2018, he started his PhD in Bioengineering at Stanford University working with Jennifer McNab on different topics involving studying the microstructure of the brain using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging, especially in relation to epilepsy. Aside from his academic experience, he has been a research intern with Google's Consumer Health Research Team. During his PhD journey, he received a Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship associated with the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Additionally, he has participated as a lesson planner and web manager for the Science Education Enrichment for Diversity (SEED) outreach program.
Gwanggyu Sun
Gwanggyu Sun is a sixth-year Ph.D. student in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford. Advised by Professor Markus Covert, he is leading the development of a whole-cell computational model of E. coli that can simulate the known functions of every gene and molecule within an E. coli cell. During his time in the program, he has mentored more than ten graduate and undergraduate students in the whole-cell modeling team, and his efforts were recognized in 2022 by the Star Mentor Award presented by Stanford Bio-X. He also worked as a part-time intern at BridgeBio, where he applied his skills to help guide decisions in the company’s drug development pipeline for the treatment of erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP) and KRAS-positive cancer. Prior to his time at Stanford, he participated in multiple research projects that involved building computational models of complex biological systems.
Xianghao Zhan
Xianghao Zhan, a 4th-year Bioengineering Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University, holds an M.S in Bioengineering (2021) and is on track to earn an M.S in Statistics by July. His research, focusing on optimizing computational models of traumatic brain injury using machine learning and animal modeling, and multimodal biomedical informatics, has been published 16 times in notable journals including NPJ Digital Medicine, IEEE J-BHI and IEEE TBME. His TBI modeling work is recognized, and he was the first Chinese awarded with IET Postgraduate Research Award for an Outstanding Researcher, and IET Healthcare Technology William James Award (one awardee globally for both awards). Zhan is dedicated to mentoring underrepresented minorities in Stanford's Summer Research Program and Foothill Community College internships. He also founded the ZML Science Communication Platform, which partnered with Harvard Medical School's Twitter in 2020 and 2021 to disseminate accurate information on China's pandemic responses and counteract misinformation and bias.
