Katie Spivakovsky Email & Phone Number

Menlo Park, Ca, Us

Menlo Park, Ca, Us

Developing nucleic acid origami nanoparticles for mRNA delivery with applications in vaccinology and therapeutics at Professor Mark Bathe and Professor Darrell Irvine's labs.

I led an undergraduate team to create "CAR-P Diem"—a proof-of-concept for a novel cancer cachexia therapy inspired by CAR T-cell therapy—by engineering macrophages with chimeric antigen receptors to specifically deplete the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6. We won a Silver Medal at the 2023 iGEM synthetic biology research competition, presented posters at the Boston Mammalian Synthetic Biology conference and MIT's Infinite Possibilities event, and published in the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal (MURJ), MIT's only peer-reviewed scientific journal serving the undergraduate population. I mentored the 2024 iGEM Team!

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Analyzed an oncogenic zinc-chelating protein using molecular dynamics simulations, developed custom geometric methods for characterizing the tetrahedral chelation complex, and implemented workflows with Python and Bash.

Kundaje Lab

I explored transcription factor DNA-binding motif syntax by training convolutional neural networks and using game theoretic and mathematical interpretation tools. I evaluated models trained on different DNA binding activity assays (ChIP-seq and CUT&RUN). As part of my role in the lab, I collaborated with Professor Anshul Kundaje and graduate students/postdocs and presented at journal club meetings.

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Biological Engineering, Artificial Intelligence; Minor In Mathematics

Activities and Societies: MIT Biotech Group Senior Associate; TA for Bioinstrumentation and Measurement (20.309); Co-Director and TA.

Education record

Activities and Societies: Varsity Golf Team Captain, Biolympiad Club Founder/President, Teaching Assistant for Latin and AP Calculus BC.

Education record

Throughout middle and high school I took advanced math classes at SOHS, including Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Real Analysis.