At an early age, Katie Spivakovsky discovered to review the world from totally different angles. Dinner-table conversations at her household’s residence in Menlo Park, California, usually leaned towards matters just like the Maillard response — the chemistry behind meals browning — or the fascinating mysteries of prime numbers. Spivakovsky’s mother and father, one in every of whom studied bodily chemistry and the opposite statistics, fostered a love of information that crossed disciplines.
In highschool, Spivakovsky explored all of it, from classical literature to pc science. She knew she needed an undergraduate expertise that inspired her broad pursuits, a place the place each discipline was inside attain.
“MIT immediately stood out,” Spivakovsky says. “But it was specifically the existence of New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) — a truly unique initiative that immerses undergraduates in interdisciplinary opportunities both within and beyond campus — that solidified my belief that MIT was the perfect fit for me.”
NEET is a cross-departmental training program that empowers undergraduates to sort out the urgent challenges of the twenty first century by means of interdisciplinary studying. Starting of their sophomore 12 months, NEET students select from one in every of 4 domains of research, or “threads:” Autonomous Machines, Climate and Sustainability Systems, Digital Cities, or Living Machines. After the standard 4 years, NEET students graduate with a diploma of their main and a NEET certificates, equipping them with each depth of their chosen discipline and the flexibility to work in, and drive impression throughout, a number of domains.
Spivakovsky is now a junior double-majoring in organic engineering and synthetic intelligence and decision-making, with a minor in arithmetic. At a time when fields like biology and pc science are merging like by no means earlier than, she describes herself as “interested in leveraging engineering and computational tools to discover new biomedical insights” — a central theme of NEET’s Living Machines thread, wherein she is now enrolled.
“NEET is about more than engineering,” says Amitava “Babi” Mitra, NEET founding government director. “It’s about nurturing young engineers who dream big, value collaboration, and are ready to tackle the world’s toughest challenges with heart and curiosity. Watching students like Katie thrive is why this program matters so deeply.”
Spivakovsky’s achievements whereas at MIT have already got a world attain. In 2023, she led an undergraduate staff on the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competitors in Paris, France, the place they introduced a proof of idea for a remedy to deal with most cancers cachexia. Cachexia is a fat- and muscle-wasting situation with no FDA-approved therapy. The situation impacts 80 p.c of late-stage most cancers sufferers and is accountable for 30 p.c of most cancers deaths. Spivakovsky’s staff received a silver medal for proposing the engineering of macrophages to take away extra interleukin-6, a pro-inflammatory protein overproduced in cachexia sufferers, and their analysis was later printed in MIT’s Undergraduate Research Journal, an honor she says was “unreal and humbling.”
Spivakovsky works as a scholar researcher within the BioNanoLab of Mark Bathe, professor of organic engineering and former NEET school director. The lab makes use of DNA and RNA to engineer nanoscale supplies for such makes use of as therapeutics and computing. Her focus is validating nucleic acid nanoparticles to be used in therapeutics.
According to Bathe, “Katie shows tremendous promise as a scientific leader — she brings unparalleled passion and creativity to her project on making novel vaccines with a depth of knowledge in both biology and computation that is truly unmatched.”
Spivakovsky says class 20.054 (Living Machines Research Immersion), which she is taking within the NEET program, enhances her work in Bathe’s lab and supplies well-rounded expertise by means of workshops that emphasize scientific communication, staying abreast of scientific literature, and analysis progress updates. “I’m interested in a range of subjects and find that switching between them helps keep things fresh,” she says.
Her interdisciplinary drive took her to Merck over the summer time, the place Spivakovsky interned on the Modeling and Informatics staff. While contributing to the event of a drug to deactivate a cancer-causing protein, she says she discovered to make use of computational chemistry instruments and developed geometric evaluation strategies to determine places on the protein the place drug molecules would possibly be capable to bind.
“My team continues to actively use the software I developed and the insights I gained through my work,” Spivakovsky says. “The target protein has an enormous patient population, so I am hopeful that within the next decade, drugs will enter the market, and my small contribution may make a difference in many lives.”
As she seems to be towards her future, Spivakovsky envisions herself on the intersection of synthetic intelligence and biology, ideally in a position that mixes moist lab with computational analysis. “I can’t see myself in a career entirely devoid of one or the other,” she says. “This incredible synergy is where I feel most inspired.”
Wherever Spivakovsky’s curiosity leads her subsequent, she says one factor is sure: “NEET has really helped my development as a scientist.”