Ivan is currently a 5th year student in the MD/PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania, where his work is supported by the NIH through an NRSA Fellowship. His research focuses on computational design of both natural and artificial proteins for applications in optogenetics. He applies these tools to study mechanobiology. Ivan received his bachelor’s degrees in biomedical engineering and applied math and statistics from Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded the Charles R. Westgate Scholarship in Engineering. At Hopkins, Ivan conducted neuroscience research, exploring new ways of delivering drugs into the brain, creating algorithms for the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders from brain images, and exploring new computational models of how neuronal synapses in the brain are maintained. As an undergraduate, he published eighteen papers, most as the first author, in peer-reviewed journals. For his research, he was awarded the Barry Goldwater Scholarship. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Ivan lived for several years in Vienna, Austria, before returning to the United States.
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[Scholar Journals]