At an early age, Katie Spivakovsky learned to review the world from different angles. Dinner-table conversations at her family’s home in Menlo Park, California, often leaned toward topics just like the Maillard response — the chemistry behind food browning — or the fascinating mysteries of prime numbers. Spivakovsky’s parents, one in every of whom studied physical chemistry and the opposite statistics, fostered a love of data that crossed disciplines.
In highschool, Spivakovsky explored all of it, from classical literature to computer science. She knew she wanted an undergraduate experience that encouraged her broad interests, a spot where every field was nearby.
“MIT immediately stood out,” Spivakovsky says. “Nevertheless it was specifically the existence of Recent Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) — a very unique initiative that immerses undergraduates in interdisciplinary opportunities each inside and beyond campus — that solidified my belief that MIT was the right fit for me.”
NEET is a cross-departmental education program that empowers undergraduates to tackle the pressing challenges of the twenty first century through interdisciplinary learning. Starting of their sophomore yr, NEET scholars pick from one in every of 4 domains of study, or “threads:” Autonomous Machines, Climate and Sustainability Systems, Digital Cities, or Living Machines. After the standard 4 years, NEET scholars graduate with a level of their major and a NEET certificate, equipping them with each depth of their chosen field and the flexibility to work in, and drive impact across, multiple domains.
Spivakovsky is now a junior double-majoring in biological engineering and artificial intelligence and decision-making, with a minor in mathematics. At a time when fields like biology and computer science are merging like never before, she describes herself as “inquisitive about leveraging engineering and computational tools to find recent biomedical insights” — a central theme of NEET’s Living Machines thread, through which she is now enrolled.
“NEET is about greater than engineering,” says Amitava “Babi” Mitra, NEET founding executive director. “It’s about nurturing young engineers who dream big, value collaboration, and are able to tackle the world’s hardest challenges with heart and curiosity. Watching students like Katie thrive is why this program matters so deeply.”
Spivakovsky’s achievements while at MIT have already got a worldwide reach. In 2023, she led an undergraduate team on the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition in Paris, France, where they presented a proof of concept for a therapy to treat cancer cachexia. Cachexia is a fat- and muscle-wasting condition with no FDA-approved treatment. The condition affects 80 percent of late-stage cancer patients and is accountable for 30 percent of cancer deaths. Spivakovsky’s team won a silver medal for proposing the engineering of macrophages to remove excess interleukin-6, a pro-inflammatory protein overproduced in cachexia patients, and their research was later published in MIT’s , an honor she says was “unreal and humbling.”
Spivakovsky works as a student researcher within the BioNanoLab of Mark Bathe, professor of biological engineering and former NEET faculty director. The lab uses DNA and RNA to engineer nanoscale materials for such uses as therapeutics and computing. Her focus is validating nucleic acid nanoparticles to be used in therapeutics.
In response to Bathe, “Katie shows tremendous promise as a scientific leader — she brings unparalleled passion and creativity to her project on making novel vaccines with a depth of data in each biology and computation that is really unmatched.”
Spivakovsky says class 20.054 (Living Machines Research Immersion), which she is taking within the NEET program, complements her work in Bathe’s lab and provides well-rounded experience through workshops that emphasize scientific communication, staying abreast of scientific literature, and research progress updates. “I’m inquisitive about a variety of subjects and find that switching between them helps keep things fresh,” she says.
Her interdisciplinary drive took her to Merck over the summer, where Spivakovsky interned on the Modeling and Informatics team. While contributing to the event of a drug to deactivate a cancer-causing protein, she says she learned to make use of computational chemistry tools and developed geometric evaluation techniques to discover locations on the protein where drug molecules might give you the option to bind.
“My team continues to actively use the software I developed and the insights I gained through my work,” Spivakovsky says. “The goal protein has an unlimited patient population, so I’m hopeful that inside the subsequent decade, drugs will enter the market, and my small contribution may make a difference in lots of lives.”
As she looks toward her future, Spivakovsky envisions herself on the intersection of artificial intelligence and biology, ideally in a task that mixes wet lab with computational research. “I can’t see myself in a profession entirely devoid of 1 or the opposite,” she says. “This incredible synergy is where I feel most inspired.”
Wherever Spivakovsky’s curiosity leads her next, she says one thing is for certain: “NEET has really helped my development as a scientist.”
