Thank you to everyone who attended the 2026 Department of Medicine & Whiting School of Engineering Research Retreat and Poster Session. We'd like to say a special thank you the committee, everyone who submitted an abstract, our presenters and our admin team for making it a huge success. We had a record number of abstract submissions this year, and we look forward to the collaborations that will come from this multidisciplinary event. We'd also like to thank our keynote speaker, Celeste Nelson, PhD, the Wilke Family Professor in Bioengineering, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and director of the Program in Engineering Biology at Princeton University, who delivered a talk titled, "Building Tissues: Insights from Engineering and Evolution."
For a full list of abstracts and speakers, view the 2026 Research Retreat Program.
View a recording of the morning presentations and keynote address here.
View Dr. Nadia Hansel's slides here.
Lightning Talks
This fast-paced session showcases some of the past year’s best science from the Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine and the Whiting School of Engineering. Each presenter shares highlights of their research findings delivered in a five-minute lightning talk.
- Ethel Weld, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases: "Preventing Tuberculosis in People with HIV: The DOLPHIN-TOO Study"
- Thomas R. Pisanic, PhD, Associate Research Professor of Engineering and Oncology, Institute for NanoBioTechnology: “Tailoring next generation methylation
assays for novel biomedical applications” - Ankit Garg, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Cardiology: “Uncovering powerful regulators of heart
contraction” - Rachel Karchin, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Institute for Computational Medicine: "Cancer Evolves, Our Therapy Should Too”
- Nestoras Mathioudakis, MD, MHS, Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism: “AI for Diabetes Prevention”
- Michael A. Cole, MD, DPhil, Instructor of Medicine, Division of Hematology: “Shedding Light on Complement Activation in Disease"
The W. Leigh Thompson Excellence in Research Awards
Basic Research Fellow Winner
Vartika Tomar, PhD, fellow in the Division of Gastroenterology: "Mechanistic Insights into the Role of ZIP8 A391T in Crohn’s Disease Pathogenesis Through Inflammatory Macrophages"
Basic Research Faculty Winner
Anant Jaiswal, PhD, research associate in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism: "Setdb2 Orchestrates Metabolic and Pathogenic Triggered Trained Immunity of Macrophages Through Two Different Epigenetic Pathways"
Clinical Research Fellow Winner
Boqun Zhu, research specialist in the Division of Gastroenterology: "Plasma VEGFA and CCL4 as Potential Biomarkers of Treatment Response and Survival in Intermediate‑Stage HCC Treated with TACE Plus Durvalumab/Tremelimumab"
Clinical Research Faculty Winner
Joowhan Sung, MD, MSc, assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases: "How Often Does AI Miss Tuberculosis During X-ray Screening? Estimating the Sensitivity of Computer-Aided Detection Using Universal Molecular Screening"
Whiting School of Engineering Research Awards
Trainee Winners
Bhawana Agarwal, graduate assistant, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering,"Extracellular Viscosity: A Potent Biophysical Regulator of Cell Fate and Immune Function"
Qiuhui Li, PhD, fellow, Department of Computer Science: "Scaling Long-Read Genomics for Population Health and Clinical Interpretation"
Lab Excellence Winner
Somdatta Goswami, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Civil and Systems Engineering: "Bridging the Deployment Gap: Physics-Informed Hybrid AI for Reliable Clinical Decision Support"
Event Photos
