Mehrana Mohtasebi, a Ph.D. candidate in the F. Joseph Halcomb III, M.D. Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), has been awarded a Predoctoral Fellowship by the American Heart Association (AHA). This prestigious award is given to enhance the integrated research and clinical training of promising graduate students who intend careers as scientists, physician-scientists or related careers aimed at improving global cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and brain health.
With this recognition, Mohtasebi will be awarded $63,040 to support her dissertation work titled “Mapping Brain Functional Connectivity Using Speckle Contrast Diffuse Correlation Tomography (scDCT).” In just over two years, Mohtasebi, guided by her advisor and mentor Professor Guoqiang Yu, has enjoyed productive research outcomes. Mohtasebi currently serves as the President of the UK BMES student chapter and is the representative for BME at UK Graduate Student Congress.
Mohtasebi has also received the 2020 BMES Career Award, the 2021 International Society of Optics and Photonics (SPIE) Conference Registration Fee Waiver Award and the 2021 UK BME Outstanding Doctoral Graduate Student Award.
“Mehrana is a sincere, independent, energetic and self-motivated student who continues to exceed my expectations. I am confident that she will have an exceptional career in the field of biomedical engineering to help patients someday,” said Yu.
“It gives me great pleasure to see Mehrana receiving this prestigious AHA award and that the excellence by our top students is recognized at the national level,” added Professor Guigen Zhang, the Chair of the BME department. "Congratulations to Mehrana and to Dr. Yu!"