Driven By Data

The innovative and data-centric research conducted by PhD students at UC Santa Barbara took center stage during the Department of Bioengineering’s second annual Data Driven Biology (DDB) Symposium. The full-day event highlighted cutting-edge work pursued by DDB Trainees and supported by the university’s National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Program on Data Driven Biology.

The student-led symposium was organized by a committee that included three DDB trainees— Elisabeth Rothman, Rafael Solorzano, and Zsofia Szegletes— and two DDB faculty mentors, Carolyn Mills, an assistant professor of bioengineering, and Siddharth Dey, an associate professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering.

“The goals of this organizing committee included connecting researchers to learn about new methods and advances, building new collaborations, and publicizing both the program and individual research projects to the DDB community at UCSB and beyond,” said Beth Pruitt, professor of bioengineering (BioE) and the principal investigator who secured the DDB training grant.

The NRT graduate training program is designed to equip the next generation of biological scientists and engineers with interdisciplinary expertise, integrating experimental research with advanced data science to propel innovation in quantitative biology and engineering. The program provides an immersive introduction to in vivo research practices and data analytics through guided lab experiences.

Supporting this vision are the grant’s co-investigators: Dey; B.S. Manjunath, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE); Linda Petzold, distinguished professor of computer science and mechanical engineering; and Dennis Clegg, distinguished professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology (MCDB). Together, this team brings deep expertise across disciplines to the program’s training and mentorship efforts.

Now entering its fifth year, the DDB program has supported twenty-two DDB Trainees and two affiliates. Sixteen DDB Trainees hail from the Department of Bioengineering, while the others represent five departments across campus: Mechanical Engineering, Physics, ECE, Biomolecular Sciences and Engineering, and MCDB.

“The UCSB NRT helped set the stage for our Bioengineering PhD program and department,” explained Pruitt, who was the founding department chair. “As an interdisciplinary program, our NRT, which started a year before our first BioE students arrived, leveraged UCSB’s collaborative research culture to elevate formal graduate research training, faculty mentorship, and student professional development opportunities from the beginning. One of our goals was not only to establish training and curriculum, but to embed it into a new department for long-term sustainability—and we achieved that goal in the first three years.”

Ten DDB Trainees presented their research at the symposium, including Artury Ramirez, a bioengineering PhD student. Advised by Michelle O’Malley, the interim chair of bioengineering, Ramirez focuses on harnessing the power of anaerobic gut fungi, particularly extracellular vesicles (EVs) that help breakdown plant biomass. Zsofia Szegletes, a bioengineering PhD student and co-organizer of the event, discussed her use of novel sequencing technologies to study the role of epigenetic states and dynamics in cell fate decisions in early mammalian embryonic development. Her work on human primordial germ cells (PCGs), under the guidance of Dey, may shed light on infertility and reproductive disorders. Amil Khan, an ECE PhD student advised by Professor Manjunath, shared his development of a large-scale system for analyzing cell shapes. Other presenters included Natasha Jones, Breanna Takacs, Donovan Sak, Katelyn Schwarz, Rafael Solorzano, Kevin Valenzuela, and Marcus Varni.

The keynote speakers were Joel S. Bader, a professor biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and Stacey D. Finley, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California. Finley, whose research lies in mathematical oncology, presented recent work modeling tumor metabolism and signaling in the tumor microenvironment. Bader spoke about his lab’s efforts in synthetic genomics, including the creation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae 2.0, the first eukaryotic cell with a fully synthetic genome.

This fall, the DDB program will welcome its fifth and final cohort of six new trainees, marking a milestone in a transformative, interdisciplinary training initiative at UCSB. A behind-the-scenes force in the program’s success has been Elizabeth Floyd, program coordinator of the Bioengineering Department and its training grants.

“Elizabeth’s dedication and tireless support of our trainees have been vital to the success of DDB,” said Pruitt. “Her coordination, attention to detail, and care for the students are what make events like this symposium possible.”