During the spring of 2023, Shivani Kumar began attending Penn State University, where she joined the Davenport Lab and benchmarked genome mapping tools to optimize the detection of viral reads in human mRNA-seq datasets. Through this work, she discovered a passion for bioinformatics and computational biology, inspiring her to pursue research at the interface of quantitative analysis and human disease.
Motivated to broaden her research experience, the Ivyland, Penn., native transferred to Cornell, where she majored in Biology with a concentration in Computational Biology. Although her early research centered on genomics and computational methods, exposure to tissue engineering and 3D bioprinting sparked a growing interest in cardiovascular engineering and developmental biomechanics. She joined the Butcher Lab, where she combined computational analysis with biomedical engineering to reconstruct four-dimensional biomechanical models of the developing embryonic chick heart using high-frequency ultrasound imaging. Her undergraduate honors thesis investigated tissue mechanics derived from 4D high-frequency ultrasound in animal models of congenital heart disease, with the goal of better understanding the biomechanical basis of cardiac malformations.
In the summer of 2024, Kumar participated in the Penn Cardiovascular Institute Undergraduate Research Program, conducting research in the Jain Lab. There, she worked on a project that focused on understanding how the spatial organization of lamina-associated chromatin domains changes following LMNA gene knockdown, building an understanding of molecular and cell biological techniques.
Drawing on her interdisciplinary background in computational biology, bioinformatics, biomechanics, and biomedical engineering, Kumar hopes to investigate the mechanisms that drive pediatric cancer progression and metastasis. She is particularly interested in leveraging computational and quantitative approaches to better understand cancer biology and to develop more effective therapeutic strategies for children with cancer.
Throughout her childhood, Kumar’s parents donated to St. Jude, and every so often the family received small St. Jude notepads in the mail decorated with children's artwork. They became her earliest awareness that some institutions exist solely to help children and families through their most difficult moments. To contribute to that mission now through her own research feels deeply meaningful. In doing so, she hopes to play even a small part in advancing St. Jude’s belief that “no child should die in the dawn of life.”
Hometown: Ivyland, PA
Education:
2026 BS, Biological Sciences (Concentration in Computational Biology) – Cornell University
Awards/Honors/Scholarships:
2026 Cum Laude, Cornell University
2026 Distinction in Research, Cornell University
Publications:
Dong G, Rhee J, Kumar SJ, Drumm ME, Lauridsen H, Esmaily-Moghadam M, Butcher JT. Longitudinal Live Imaging-Derived 4D Hemodynamics and Dynamic Tissue Mechanics Across Outflow Tract Morphogenesis. Ann Biomed Eng. 2026 Jul;54(7):2129-2147. doi: 10.1007/s10439-026-04006-y. Epub 2026 Feb 17. PMID: 41703355.