Fellows receive a three-year stipend of $37,000, along with opportunities for international research and professional development. This year, the foundation awarded 2,500 fellowships from a pool of more than 14,000 applicants.
The 2026 Fellows from Hopkins BME are:
Isabella Cozzone is a first-year PhD student in Jordan Green’s lab, where she’s developing nanoparticles designed to deliver genes to specific parts of the body. Her work could impact areas like immunotherapy, eye diseases, and treatments that target the brain.
Rene DeBrabander, who graduated in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering, is pursuing his PhD in bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Working in Flavia Vitale’s lab, he designs bioelectronic devices to better understand, diagnose, and treat neurological disorders.
Alexandra Gorham graduated in 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and now works as a research assistant at the Wyss Institute at Harvard. She is developing an immunocapture platform for cell-specific extracellular vesicle analysis.
Eleanor Holtermann is a graduating senior heading to MIT this fall to pursue a PhD in biological engineering. She plans to build on her work developing new ways to study how genes are regulated.
Nikita Lebedz is a PhD student in Kathleen Cullen’s lab, studying how the brain combines sensory input and motor signals to control movement. His long-term goal is to help design neural implants that restore lost function.
Matias Lee is a PhD student rotating through several Hopkins labs, where he develops computational tools to study the genome at multiple scales. His research ranges from using machine learning to identify regulatory motifs in DNA sequences to leveraging long-read sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to map complex cell-to-cell signaling.
Aarushi Pant is a graduating senior who will begin her PhD at Tufts University this fall, where she’ll work in Juan Gnecco’s Reproductive Engineering lab at the intersection of tissue engineering, reproductive biology, and women’s health.
Catherine Rasgaitis is a PhD student rotating through several Hopkins labs, where she studies how the brain processes sensory information. Her research ranges from auditory perception in mice to how bats integrate echolocation, vision, and balance while flying.
Aaliyah Thompson-Mazzeo is a PhD student in the Haptics and Medical Robotics (HAMR) Lab, led by Jeremy Brown. She explores how proprioception and haptic feedback can improve movement, rehabilitation, and human-robot interaction in technologies like prosthetics and exoskeletons.
