Meet Our 2020 Summer Program Students

Please get to know a little bit more about our next group of students in the 2020 cohort of the Summer Program in Biostatistics and Computational Biology.

Runa (Yan) Cheng graduated from Swarthmore College in 2020, majoring in Biology with minors in Statistics and Chemistry. She attempted to engineer the human HSPs to ameliorate neurodegenerative diseases at the Shorter Lab. In the fall, she will join the NIH IRTA Postbaccalaureate program to study autoimmune diseases and mature as a researcher. She is very passionate about bioinformatics, big data analysis and modeling, and she aspires to become a physician scientist. She hopes to contribute to translational advances in biomedicine and help further the  understanding of diseases.


Caroline Echeandia-Francis graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in May 2019 with a double major in biology and psychological and brain sciences. Driven by her passion for caring for our aging population, Caroline aspires to use biostatistics research to provide data driven information to older adults and their caregivers in order to help them make informed, personalized decisions surrounding eldercare. Participating in Harvard T.H. Chan School’s Summer Program in Biostatistics and Computational Biology will provide Caroline with the foundational training to make an impact through her research. She isthrilled to participate in the program and eager to engage with her fellow cohort members as well as Chan School graduate students and faculty!


Erick Miguel Ivanovich Méndez is a student at the University of Puerto Rico on the Río Piedras Campus. He is majoring in Mathematics and concentrating in statistics and computational mathematics. Erick is currently thinking about minoring in Chemistry.  After choosing a minor, Erick plans to graduate within the next 2 to 3 years. Erick is planning on entering the School of Medicine in the UPR system, and has interests in becoming a Forensic Medical Examiner along with taking part in public health in the future.


Jose Lopez graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May of 2020, earning his Bachelor of Science in Public Health – Biostatistics. His research interests include infectious disease and environmental health concerning causal inference and statistical network science. Jose hopes to pursue a career in academia, where he can contribute to solving a multitude of problems and mentor others pursuing research. Fall 2020, he plans to begin his masters in biostatistics again at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ultimately, he plans to pursue a Ph.D. also in Biostatistics.