Ashti Shah, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, received the Foundation of Systems Biology in Engineering (FOSBE) Young Investigator Award for her research in computation immunology. This is the first year that FOSBE and the literary publication Frontier have cosponsored the award, which is given to new researchers who make substantial contributions to the field. Along with the award, FOSBE is flying Shah to Corfu, Greece in September to accept the honor and to give a presentation on the future of systems biology at the 10th International Federation of Automatic Control International Conference on Foundations of Systems Biology in Engineering (FOSBE 2024).
For three years, Shah has worked with her mentor, Yoram Vodovotz, professor of surgery, of immunology, and of computational and systems biology, School of Medicine; of bioengineering, Swanson School of Engineering; and of clinical and translational science. Shah’s work focuses on how inflammation from various causes, such as infection or trauma, spreads throughout body tissue. She built a set of algorithms to model the spread of inflammation, which can be applied to many projects.