2026 Bioengineering Cohort
The Knight Campus welcomes new PhD students whose diverse talents and interests are matched by a shared drive to create real-world impact and elevate their scientific careers.
Roxanne Bahn-Bales
Willett and Keller Labs
Undergraduate Studies: Oregon State University
“The intersection of gender-affirming care and tissue engineering has been my through-line since I (first became) interested in science. (As an undergraduate), I developed an honors thesis where I interviewed around 11 gender-affirming care surgeons across the US in 2023. The study focused on ways to implement these technologies into gender-affirming care, specifically surgical care. As a transgender woman, I saw those opportunities firsthand, and I really found a home in this cross-disciplinary research. I’ve honed in on immunology and regenerative medicine. I'm really interested in combining those two fields because I think there's a greatly underserved population that bioengineering can really make a difference for.”
Emma Holloway
Benoit Lab
Undergraduate Studies: Colorado State University
“With any RO1 school, you're going to get opportunities to do really cool research, but I felt like the opportunities that Danielle Benoit presented in her lab, the expertise that she brings to the community and the culture here was something that I wanted to align with. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Right off the bat, I felt very connected to the community and with the research. There's such an emphasis on end-result research, and people want the pathway to be cleared so that research breakthroughs are actually going into people who need them. That translational aspect, is not something that you see at a lot of other universities.”
Ryan Lang
Keller Lab
Undergraduate Studies: Santa Clara University
“I saw bioengineering as an opportunity that merges different branches of engineering together with the sciences and uses a bit from everything. That really drew me in. I want to work on something that directly impacts patients. I chose this program because, when I was here on visiting weekend, I met the people, and they had the same energy as the people who had helped push me forward in the past. I really thought that was important, to be supported wherever I go.”
Jocelyn Leal
Willett Lab
Undergraduate Studies: Haverford College
“I played softball growing up, since I was 7 years old and all the way through college, and I love it. Being a female athlete comes with a whole different set of considerations both on the field and off. There is not as much research on the female body and how it works in sport, which is what originally got me interested in human performance research and connected my love of sports and science. This led me to Dr. Willett’s lab and his work on regenerative therapeutics for wound healing, which I hope to combine with rehabilitation work as a part of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance. I hope to use what I learn here to one day work in collaboration with orthopedic surgeons in sports medicine.”
Sam Littman
Plesa Lab
Undergraduate Studies: Tufts University
“I'm focused on combining wet-lab work and computation through bioengineering, which I believe will define the next frontier of biotechnology. This convergence has the potential to drive huge leaps in a variety of fields, especially healthcare. My goal is not just to have an impact on people by, say, making a single biosensor, but creating systems and tools that actually allow us to vastly increase the scale of impact that we can have. Having a tangible impact on society is a big emphasis for the Knight Campus, and it's one of the main reasons I came here.”
Cagla Numanoglu
Peeler Lab
Undergraduate Studies: Union College (New York)
“When I was 15 I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which was a very devastating thing to happen, especially at (that age). I studied biomedical engineering for my undergraduate degree and I did research on the development of a mucosal Lyme disease vaccine, which was very interesting to me because I think Lyme disease falls under a very similar category as MS in ways, especially when you get to chronic Lyme disease. If you don't know that you have it and you don't get treated properly, it turns into this horrible life-changing chronic thing. So I thought that that vaccine idea was really cool, especially new delivery platforms.”
Andre Olarra
Dalton Lab
Undergraduate Studies: Oregon State University
“I've always been interested in building and creating things, which is what drew me to mechanical engineering. I'm here to develop additive manufacturing processes that can be applied to medical research. As a cancer survivor myself, developing models for other cancers is something meaningful to me.”
Katie Zobus
Benoit and Willett Labs
Undergraduate Studies: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“Through my undergraduate training in tissue engineering, I developed a strong interest in developing therapies for tissue repair. This led me to join the labs of Dr. Danielle Benoit and Dr. Nick Willett to engineer a drug delivery system for musculoskeletal injuries. I was drawn to the greater impact of their research, as I felt the technology could be adaptable across multiple contexts. In joining the Knight Campus, I was also enamored by the independence and drive the students had. It seemed like they all wanted to build something new, which is an environment I know I’d thrive best in.”
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