Fischell Institute Spotlight: Ben Wu

Ben Wu is a first-year Ph.D. bioengineering student. He received his bachelor's in bioengineering from the Fischell Department of Bioengineering last year.

Passionate about bioengineering and computer science, Wu was drawn to the University of Maryland for its strong and unique programs. As an undergraduate student, he switched majors to pursue bioengineering to explore his interest in biological problems and the tools needed to solve them.

"While I work on bioengineering problems, the tool I'm interested in is deep learning," he said. "Being in bioengineering while working a few buildings away from the strong computer science department enables me to work on the boundary of both fields."

Wu is currently a member of Fischell Institute Director Bill Bentley's Biomolecular and Metabolic Engineering Laboratory. He joined after being curious about Bentley's research on propagating and interpreting biological information using synthetic biology, aided by computation, materials, and devices.

"Working in Dr. Bentley's lab has been a wonderful experience. I get to work on such an interesting and difficult problem, and it provides opportunities for self-growth," he said. "Everyone in the lab is friendly and they are always willing to help with any problems I have."

Currently, Wu’s research is focused on getting a neural network to figure out if two electrochemical snapshots (cyclic voltammograms) correspond to different views of the same biological system.

“It’s analogous to looking at facial profiles of the same person from different sides: even though your front profile doesn't look the same as your side profile, anyone can still look at those pictures and tell me whether a new image is a picture of you or another person entirely,” he explained. “Applied to my research problem, the different facial profiles are cyclic voltammograms: we can change our measurement procedure a little bit and get a very different-looking output.”

Wu wants a network to understand that those two measurements are the same biological system, even though they look different. He also noted that this work is exciting because it's such a different approach from what's been done before, both in what is examined in bioengineering and in computer science.

After graduation, Wu would like to continue working at the intersection of deep learning and bioengineering.Wu enjoys fishing, going to the gym, and going to the pool with his friends.

Published July 13, 2023