Special Summer Programs for the SAS/AAA Class of 2027

Taro Porschke has been selected to participate in a REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) for the Summer of 2026 with The Catholic University of America (in Washington, D.C.) conducting research in Biophysics.

Here is a brief description of what the research is about:  The computational component of this project, conducted in collaboration with the NIH’s Epithelial Systems Biology Laboratory, focuses on developing novel tools to search, analyze, and extract meaningful inferences from large-scale biological databases. This partnership addresses the ongoing challenge of managing massive biological datasets and has already produced publicly available databases alongside web-accessible analytical software. Students participating in this track will contribute directly to these efforts through hands-on projects involving software development and testing, physics-based modeling of complex biological systems, and database creation and validation. Taro will have to tell us what all of that means when he returns.