Computational Biology Department Admits First Student to New Undergraduate Program

Chaya Wurman, a sophomore, has recently been accepted as the first School of Computer Science student in the Undergraduate Program in Computational Biology at Carnegie Mellon University.  A former student in the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Chaya has been active in campus organizations, including ChemE Car, where she led a team to develop a chemical mechanism to automatically stop a car.

Chaya is looking forward to combining her interests in biology and computer science.  “I’m incredibly excited to have the opportunity to be the first graduate of [this program].”  She is specifically interested in the field of Computational Genomics, currently serving as an intern in the Bachtrog Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.  “I have always been amazed by the sheer power that computing tools have when applied to fields like genetics, and I believe that the applications are endless.  Hopefully after I graduate, I’ll be able to participate in creating some of the new technologies that are solving problems in genetics and biology today.”

Chaya currently serves as a teaching assistant for the Computer Science Course “Fundamentals of Programming and Computer Science”. This summer, Chaya will be a summer intern for Girls Who Code, a nonprofit aiming to close the gender gap in computational disciplines.