An Emory College junior working as an assistant researcher with Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University scientists was recently named one of two Emory undergraduates to be among the recipients nationwide of the prestigious 2024 Goldwater Scholarship.
Satvik Elayavalli, majoring in applied mathematics and statistics, joins fellow Emory junior Julianna Cruz among this year’s 508 recipients of the nation’s top scholarship for undergraduates in math, natural sciences and engineering.
Elayavalli helped to conduct genetic screenings using a budding yeast model in the lab of Winship researcher Anita Corbett, PhD, member of Winship’s Cell and Molecular Biology Research Program and Samuel C. Dobbs Professor in the Department of Biology at Emory College of Arts and Sciences. His work there led to further collaboration in analyzing RNA-sequencing data in the lab of Winship scientist Jennifer M. Spangle, PhD, also a member of Winship’s Cell and Molecular Biology Research Program and assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine.
Elayavalli then secured a computational research role in 2023 at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. There he worked to develop a simulation for single-cell RNA-sequencing data as part of Ken Chen’s bioinformatics lab. He also volunteered to help another researcher with statistical tests on a different project. Elayavalli is credited as the co-author in two forthcoming publications related to those projects.
For his honors thesis, Elayavalli will apply machine learning to discover new methods to analyze medical images under the leadership of Winship researcher Anant Madabhushi, PhD, member of Winship’s Cancer Immunology Research Program and executive director of Emory Empathic AI for Health Institute.
Elayavalli plans to pursue a PhD in applied math. He believes his niche lies in computational research with real-world impact in oncology research. He also provides tutoring in math and English as part of Emory Reads and takes piano lessons to provide stress release and a challenge.
“I think the reason I like math and the prospect of a career in this area is the same as piano,” Elayavalli says. “Both are solving puzzles where you have to figure out why something is going wrong or what will create an output in the specific way you need. It’s very gratifying to win the Goldwater for that.”