Joanna Peng
GCS E-Portfolio
Class of 2024
- Hometown: Seattle, WA
- Major: Biomedical Engineering
- Minors: Machine Learning (ECE) and Chemistry
- GCS Advisors: Dr. Ashutosh Chilkoti, Alan L. Kaganov Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Dr. Cassio Fontes, Research Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
- GC Focus: Engineer Better Medicines
- GC Thesis: Rational engineering of multimeric constructs for ultra sensitive, low-cost, and efficient point-of-care immunodiagnostics.
I was eager to join the Grand Challenge Scholars Program to facilitate a multidisciplinary approach to my learning as an aspiring physician-scientist. Many of the core facets upheld by the GCS program–academic inquiry, entrepreneurship, and service–are principles that are crucial to equipping engineers with the tools to make large scale impacts. On that note, I was especially impressed by the program’s focus on fostering an entrepreneurial spirit and global perspective. I hope to use this program to improve both my technical and interpersonal skills with the ultimate goal of becoming an effective and impactful biomedical engineer.
Coupled with my scientific ambitions, I hope to use my skills as a biomedical engineer to make medicine more equitable for disadvantaged populations at a national and global scale. The COVID-19 pandemic hit its climax as I matriculated to Duke, and it revealed to me that improving healthcare and medicine should be a global effort. Having an increased awareness of global matters, I become highly interested in combating the health disparities present in low-to-middle income countries through my translational research. Having a desire to improve health equity and outcomes requires an appreciation for other cultures. Consciously aiming to understand the non-visable barriers to healthcare, and their consequences, in different countries and groups of people is key to truly engineering better medicines.
With my Duke research career beginning during a pandemic, the opportunities available to me were more computational. Such an introduction to the research space opened my eyes to the colossal extent computation tools could further medicine and science. Capitalizing on Machine Learning tools, I aim to integrate computational skills with my translational research to further the field of medicine by creating more efficient workflows for the engineering of better medicines .
Joanna Peng E-Portfolio. 