Kelly Pu

Kelly Pu is a sophomore from Eden Prairie, Minnesota. At Columbia, she plans to major in biomedical engineering and hopes to continue to explore the unknown through research and innovation in order to improve the lives of others.

During high school, Kelly conducted research at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research at the University of Minnesota with Dr. Shalom Michaeli and Dr. Silvia Mangia. There, she analyzed MRI data to look for MRI indicators in gray matter that could be used to better diagnose Multiple Sclerosis. Kelly also spent a summer at the Tian Lab at Boston University researching computational imaging systems. After developing an optical system to capture digital holograms, she examined the difference in image quality of holograms reconstructed using conventional methods and an iterative backpropagation model novel to compressive holography.

Outside of research, Kelly played tennis, competed in Science Olympiad, and was Editor-in-Chief of her school newspaper. She also participated in Destination Imagination, a team-based creative problem solving competition, for ten years.

Currently, Kelly conducts research in the Danino Lab, where she evaluates the efficacy of bacterially-delivered cancer immunotherapies in mice tumor models. She is also on the board of the Biomedical Engineering Society and a member of the design section at the Columbia Daily Spectator. In her free time, she can be found running in Riverside or Central Park, visiting museums (she wants to visit every museum in New York before she graduates), and admiring all the dogs on campus.