Meghana Gudur
Meghana Gudur graduated summa cum laudefrom Woodward Academy in College Park, Georgia. Through her coursework and extracurricular activities, she developed strong interests in computer science and its applications to personalized medicine and entrepreneurship. At Columbia SEAS, she hopes to major in either Biomedical Engineering or Operations Research.
For the past two years, Meghana has conducted genomics research at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Bioinformatics and Imaging Lab. By collaborating with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, she analyzed the genomic sequences of infants who underwent cardiac surgery to search for genetic markers predicting potential neurological injury. Meghana was recognized at a variety of local healthcare conferences as well as science research competitions for her work.
For her work championing the value of computing education, the National Center for Women in Information Technology recognized Meghana as a National Award Winner in 2015. At the Jesse Draper Boys and Girls Club, Meghana founded and taught US-Be Engineers, a program that offers free computer science classes for middle school students living in metro Atlanta. Additionally, she developed a low-cost curriculum for public schools that enables students to learn computer science without any additional resources. She looks forward to continuing community outreach by joining Engineers Without Borders at Columbia.
Outside of academics, Meghana was manager of her school’s varsity basketball team as well as president of the Junior Classical League and Latin Honors Society. Meghana enjoys learning about other cultures, eating Thai food, watching television, and volunteering at animal shelters.