Division of Biology and Medicine
Program in Biology
Date October 6, 2026
All News

Brown Names 2026 Blavatnik Family Fellows

Brown University has announced the next cohort of students to receive the Blavatnik Family Graduate Fellowship in Biology and Medicine, which is made possible through a generous, multi-year donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

The eight Blavatnik Family Fellows were selected based on outstanding academic achievement and demonstrated potential for producing original research that advances scientific knowledge and understanding in the basic and clinical life sciences. The fellows are doctoral candidates in the Brown Division of Biology and Medicine’s graduate programs. 

“It’s a great pleasure to welcome the new Blavatnik Family Fellows, each of whom has shown enormous promise for continued, innovative research in the years ahead,” said Len Blavatnik, Founder of Access Industries and Head the Blavatnik Family Foundation.

This is the fourth cohort of the fellowship, which was first awarded in 2023. Each fellow receives one academic year of support, as well as a research fund. 

“The visionary generosity of the Blavatnik Family Foundation continues to accelerate our mission of fostering world-class scientific inquiry and educational excellence,” said Mukesh K. Jain, MD, senior associate provost for life sciences, senior vice president for health affairs, and dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown University. “This incoming cohort of fellows embodies the very best of our graduate programs—combining rigorous scientific curiosity with a profound commitment to tackling complex biological and clinical challenges. We are immensely grateful for the Foundation’s continued partnership in nurturing these exceptional young researchers.” 

“We are excited to welcome another cohort of Blavatnik Family Fellows,” said Elizabeth Harrington, PhD, associate dean of biology doctoral education in the Division of Biology and Medicine at Brown University. “They are studying fields as diverse as ecology and parasitology to AI in public health genomic data, neuronal development, and protein structures, and advancing our understanding of an array of diseases from brain tumors to Alzheimer’s disease. They represent the next generation of scientists, full of promise.”

About the Division of Biology and Medicine

The Division of Biology and Medicine at Brown University comprises the Program in Biology and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Its mission is to advance knowledge and improve the health and well-being of people and the planet. For more information, visit biomed.brown.edu.

About the Blavatnik Family Foundation

The Blavatnik Family Foundation provides many of the world’s best researchers, scientists and future leaders with the support and funding needed to solve humankind’s greatest challenges. Led by Len Blavatnik, founder of Access Industries, the Foundation advances and promotes innovation, discovery and creativity to benefit the whole of society. To date, the Foundation has contributed over $1.5 billion to more than 250 organizations. See more at blavatnikfoundation.org. 

2026 Blavatnik Family Fellows

  • Bryce Barbee

    Bryce Barbee

    Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology Graduate Program. Bryce is interested in how the behaviors mediating cleaning mutualisms – interspecies interactions in which cleaner shrimp remove and consume ectoparasites located on “client” fish – vary and what this variation may mean for the outcomes and overall stability of these ecologically important interactions. His mentor is Eleanor Caves, PhD.

  • Mary Flordelys Dizon Avila

    Mary Flordelys Dizon Avila

    Mary Flordelys Dizon Avila, Pathobiology Graduate Program. Mary is employing a new strategy to discover and target mechanisms to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Her mentor is Gregorio Valdez, PhD.

  • Hanny Hameedy

    Hanna Hameedy

    Neuroscience Graduate Program. Hanna’s research explores how distinct subtypes of spinal cord neurons navigate through developing tissue to form the precise connections needed for normal nervous system function. Her mentor is Alexander Jaworski, PhD.

  • Nell Klampert

    Nell Klampert

    Neuroscience Graduate Program. Nell investigates the activity-dependent molecular mechanisms involved in strengthening the neuronal connections between the olfactory system and the hippocampus via their relay station, the lateral entorhinal cortex, to give rise to odor-place associations. Her mentor is Alexander Fleischmann, PhD.

  • Owen Leary

    Owen Leary

    Pathobiology Graduate Program. Owen’s research is investigating the possibility of using circulating micro-RNAs (tiny RNA molecules in the blood) to diagnose and predict clinical outcomes of patients with brain tumors, as well as the role these molecules may play in regulating the behavior of brain cancer stem cells. His mentor is Petra Klinge, MD, PhD. 

  • Madeline Malfara

    Madeline Malfara

    Pathobiology Graduate Program. Maddie uses microscopy and genetic manipulation to understand how the feeding structure in the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease, is formed and maintained. Her mentor is Christopher de Graffenried, PhD.

  • Cecile Meirer-Scherling

    Cecile Meirer-Scherling

    Computational Molecular Biology Graduate Program. Cecile builds artificial intelligence models that pull trustworthy, understandable insights from messy, incomplete biological and clinical data to track how malaria drug resistance spreads, which has informed World Health Organization policy, and to combine clinical and wearable-device data to better predict blood health markers. Her mentor is Jeffrey Bailey, MD, PhD.

  • Camila Molina

    Camila Molina

    Camila Molina, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry Graduate Program. Camila's research focuses on elucidating the allosteric regulation of the DNA cleavage mechanism by CRISPR-Cas12a and using this information to intuitively engineer a hyper-active variant of Cas12a. Her mentor is George Lisi, PhD.