About Me

Hi! I’m Merih Deniz Toruner. I’m currently a rising senior at Brown University Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME) and majoring in Computational Biology Sc.B. I was born and raised in Ankara, Turkey, and went to TED Ankara College Foundation High School. There, I completed the IB Diploma program (International Baccalaureate Diploma Program) with full merit academic scholarship and high honor.

I am an undergraduate researcher at the Rhode Island Hospital (RIH) and Brown University working at the Tapinos Laboratory (Laboratory of Cancer Epigenetics and Plasticity) to conduct research on molecular neuro-oncology and epigenetics. I’m working on a novel brain cancer therapy for GBM (glioblastoma multiforme) and on big data analyses and biomedical engineering aspect of research. Additionally, I’m developing a machine learning model for transcription prediction for GBM patients. Besides Brown, I’m working at the Mayo Clinic Schulze Center for Novel Therapeutics at the Fernandez-Zapico Laboratory. There, I’m focusing on computational biology techniques in the lab, such as epi-transcriptomic analyses for gastrointestinal (GI) cancers and patient derived organoids (PDOs).

With great guidance from my mentors in my labs during my internship experiences, I started to develop great interest in research, mainly in oncology. I want to understand current issues in our approaches to cancer and contribute to finding meaningful research ways with more positive clinical outcomes. I am eager to learn and to connect computational biology with epigenetics research in oncology to contribute to this collaborative research area.

Besides research, I’ve also been working at the Coronavirus Visualization Team (CVT) since June 2020, a Harvard student-founded organization that aims to better inform the public during the COVID-19 pandemic through data visualization. There, I am the co-leader of the Global Initiative to End Gender-Based Violence project in partnership with the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the podcast “She Belongs”.

I have also spoken at online conferences and workshops for middle school and high school students about the integration of computer science and medical research such as at the UC Berkeley SENDforC STEM Spotlight Series and San Diego Superposition Organization.