Bhairavy P
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at Duke University
Expertise
biomedical engineering/sciences, oncology, immunology, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine
Bio
Hello! I am a current Biomedical Engineering PhD Student at Duke University. My research revolves around improving therapeutic outcomes for glioblastoma patients from an immunology perspective. My previous research experiences include oncology and tissue engineering. I hope to enter the workforce with a unique perspective in order to improve therapeutic outcomes, and I'm excited to mentor those on a similar journey of self- and career-development. I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and moved to Chapel Hill, NC in 2014. I love cooking/baking, hiking, listening to audiobooks, and spending time with my family.Project ideas
Review Article: Barriers to Effective Therapeutics
Choose a pathology/disease of your choice (ex. cancer, Alzheimer's). Choose one or more therapies made to combat it. Conduct a literature review on what research and reviews have been completed on the efficacy of the therapy for your disease. Conduct a literature review on what knowledge is missing/unknown, specifically, what are the physiological (and other types of) barriers preventing current therapeutics from working. If you find something different that is "missing/unknown," chase that down. Deliverable: review article covering your disease, previous research, existing treatments (mechanism of action, delivery, outcomes), future things to consider
Public Dataset Analysis: What trends are found in publicly available clinical data that can inform future treatments?
Find a publicly available dataset. This can include clinical trials, specific sequencing data to be analyzed (ex. TCGA), general patient data (ex. Medicare SEER). Decide on a topic that interests you (ex. cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes). Decide on a question you hope to answer using the public data (ex. genes correlated with certain cancer types and poor or good outcomes, why multiple clinical trials fail and why some work - what can be done here, medications associated with positive/negative outcomes in CV disease/diabetes). Conduct a brief literature review to ensure your question has not been directly answered, and start your project. Different tools can be used to analyze your findings (JMP, MATLAB, RStudio). Deliverable: report describing your topic, reasons for choosing the topic and approach, methods, findings, discussion of findings
Mini-Design Health: Biomedical/Health Engineering Focus
Conduct a needs finding session where you identify a need in a medical/biomedical/biological context. Talk to experts that may have expertise and input (ex. clinicians, engineers). Come up with a needs statement. Come up with a prototype based on findings from market analysis, opportunity matrix, and more. Deliverable: report on needs finding, expert interviews, needs statement development, solution development and steps, prototype methods