Meet the team
Dr. Athreya's research team advances computer engineering for healthcare and precision medicine.
Milica Barac
Graduate Research Education Program
Milica Barac started in the Health Engineering and Analytics Laboratory as a summer intern while completing her bachelor's degree at the University of Illinois. As a graduate student, she is focused on machine learning, personalized medicine and wellness. Her project aims to identify brain and blood biomarkers for antidepressant response. She also studies the use of wearable technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to predict burnout.
Barac loves being able to pose unique research questions and constantly learn new methods while working with other motivated people on meaningful projects. She wants to continue building her technical skill set and better understand how to use computational tools to gain meaningful insights from clinical datasets.
Karina Delaney
Graduate Research Education Program
Karina Delaney is a graduate student in the Health Engineering and Analytics Laboratory. Her interests center on mental health, physiological biomarkers, public health and translational science. She joined Dr. Athreya's lab as an undergraduate while earning a Bachelor of Science from Boston College with a major in neuroscience and a minor in global public health and the common good. Her research is focused on identifying markers of behavioral or neuromodulatory treatment response within child psychiatry.
Delany plans to be a physician but wants to become highly knowledgeable about current research methods and stay involved in research throughout her career.
Caroline W. Grant
Ph.D. Program: Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Track
Caroline W. Grant is a doctoral student at Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She previously completed a bachelor's degree in neuroscience from Northwestern University and a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. Her interests lie in multi-omics integration strategies, genomics and machine learning. Specifically, she is working on AI-based multimodal data integration for discovering new biomarkers for various diseases.
Grant is passionate about working on applied biological questions and wants to be close to the patient experience. Ultimately, she hopes to see her research positively impact people's lives and the management of disease, whether this involves work in healthcare centers or in industry.
Jeremiah B. Joyce, M.D., M.S.
Resident
Dr. Joyce received his medical degree from Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine. His areas of interest are psychiatry, machine learning, and voice and speech audio data. His projects involve a computational analysis of spoken language in mania and prediction of clinical responses in bipolar depression.
Dr. Joyce hopes to expand the understanding of mental illness and improve the lives of those with mental illness through clinical and translational research. He is completing his residency program while completing several research projects and applying for a clinical fellowship.
Jean M. Marrero-Polanco
Ph.D. Program: Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Track
Jean M. Marrero-Polanco has a Bachelor of Science in cellular molecular biology from the University of Puerto Rico. He is pursuing a doctoral degree through the Molecular Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Track of the Ph.D. Program at Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
Marrero-Polanco's areas of interest include multi-omics, mental health and AI. His project uses AI approaches to identify drug response and remission predictors across different mental health conditions. As a biomedical researcher, his goal is to aid healthcare professionals and patients by identifying treatment outcome-related networks through machine learning and other AI tools and using clinical and biological datasets.
Marrero-Polanco is excited about the potential for AI to revolutionize healthcare. He seeks to become a principal investigator and professor at an academic institution where he can continue conducting research and help cultivate the growth and development of future professionals.
Christina T. Saliba
Graduate Research Education Program
Christina T. Saliba has a bachelor's honors degree in psychomotricity from Lebanese University and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her areas of interest include child development and psychopathology, machine learning, and AI. Her projects include the Burnout Prediction Using Wearable and Artificial Intelligence (BROWNIE) and the Preemption of Disruptive Behavior in Children (PISTACHIo) studies.
Saliba is passionate about exploring the complexities of human behavior and mental health, investigating evidence-based interventions, and creating a broader impact by advancing therapeutic approaches. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology to deepen her understanding of human behavior and contribute to research that improves mental health outcomes.
Mike Zhu
Senior Software Engineer
Mike Zhu has bachelor's degrees in biomedical engineering and computer science from Duke University. Zhu has spent many years building software products for researchers in the biotech and finance industries. His areas of interest include software engineering, machine learning and preventive medicine. He also is focused on information technology, genomics and bioinformatics systems, and individualized medicine. Currently, Zhu is building a software platform to predict adverse health events using real-time data streams from wearable devices.
Zhu believes that better tools enable better, faster research, and that a deep understanding of the research process enables scientists and engineers to develop such tools. He hopes to develop skills in quantitative research and modeling, as well as domain knowledge in healthcare. He seeks to integrate these skills with his engineering skill set to develop products that make it easier for people to engage with data.