First Cohort of Picker ISI Scholars Takes On Interdisciplinary Research Projects [email protected] Fri, 10/30/2026 - 15:00 Three Colgate students are continuing work started this past summer on interdisciplinary…
First Cohort of Picker ISI Scholars Takes On Interdisciplinary Research Projects [email protected] Fri, 10/30/2026 - 15:00 Three Colgate students are continuing work started this past summer on interdisciplinary research projects through the Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute (Picker ISI) Scholars Program, which pairs students with a Colgate faculty mentor and an outside research mentor at universities such as UCLA, Columbia, and Drexel.
This first cohort of Picker ISI Scholars is part of the institute’s ongoing efforts to support collaborative research at Colgate that brings together expertise from across disciplines to address complex scientific problems. Professor of Biology and Mathematics and Picker ISI Director Ahmet Ay said the program allows students to propose their own interdisciplinary projects, spend the summer immersed in the work, and continue it through the academic year under the guidance of a Colgate faculty mentor.
“They leave with the kind of experience most students do not get until graduate school,” Ay said. Richelle Gao ’27 is working on her research project, “Biomarker-Driven Diagnostic Modeling to Complement Urine Cytology in Urothelial Carcinoma,” under the dual mentorship of Bineyam Taye, associate professor of biology and global public and environmental health, and Professor Jian Yu Yao, vice chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UCLA Health.
Gao’s project aims to improve the detection and understanding of urothelial carcinoma, a type of cancer that develops in the layer of cells lining the urinary system. During the first half of the summer, she worked on the biological side of the project, investigating potential biomarkers, and later developed AI models that combine textual information from patients’ clinical records with visual information from urine cytology images to make a slide-level diagnosis.
Gao, a molecular biology major, plans to continue developing and validating the AI model during the academic year. “Computational models are ultimately representations of real biological systems and human needs,” Gao said.
This is a source-linked briefing. Read the original report from Colgate University .