Sarah He earned her bachelor's degree in biology and a minor in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. During her time at Carnegie Mellon University, she received a senior leadership award, university and college honors, and was actively involved in the Mellon College of Science Student Advisory Council as President.
While pursuing her studies in biology, she also furthered her interest in research through various projects in two different labs. He’s main mentor throughout her undergraduate career was Dr. Yi-Nan Gong, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Immunology. While under the guidance of Dr. Gong, she had three main projects. Her first project was studying the molecular pathway of TIM-3, an immune checkpoint receptor that plays an important role in immunoregulation and is correlated with T-cell exhaustion. Her second project was developing a deep learning algorithm to detect different cell states in an automated, label-free manner. This project ultimately led to her first publication, where she was the primary author. Her third project in Dr. Gong's lab was identifying genes responsible for cell death induced by heavy metals through CRISPR screening. Outside of Dr. Gong's lab, He also briefly worked at the lab of Dr. Lu-Zhe Sun, where she studied novel chemotherapy approaches to treat hepatocellular carcinoma.
These experiences led He to pursue a PhD, where she hopes to use her interdisciplinary background to solve complex problems in the field of cancer biology.
Hometown: Portland, OR
Publications:
He S, Sillah, M, Cole, A R, Uboveja A, Aird KM, Chen YC, Gong YN. (2024). D-MAINS: A Deep-Learning Model for the Label-Free Detection of Mitosis, Apoptosis, Interphase, Necrosis, and Senescence in Cancer Cells. Cells 13(12), 1004. https://doi.org/10.3390/cells13121004
Chiang CC, Anne R, Chawla P, Shaw RM, He S, Rock EC, Zhou M, Cheng J, Gong YN, Chen YC. (2024). Deep learning unlocks label-free viability assessment of cancer spheroids in microfluidics. Lab on a chip, 24(12), 3169–3182. https://doi.org/10.1039/d4lc00197d