The Youth Journal Club Project
Anya Reddy
Cell and Molecular Biology Section Lead
Anya Reddy is a junior at Blue Valley North in Kansas. She enjoys genetic research and learning about molecular biology.
Seher Saini
Health and Medicine Section Lead
Head of Outreach
Seher Saini is a junior at Hickory High School in Chesapeake, VA. She's passionate about biology and aspires to pursue healthcare as a career.
Sloka Ganne
Neuroscience Section Lead
Sloka Ganne is a senior from Blue Valley West High School, Kansas, who is interested in neuroscience.
Vaishnav Nair
Research Methodology Section Lead
Vaishnav Nair is a sophomore at the Pembroke Hill School in Kansas City, MO. He is interested in human anatomy.
Tahir Khwaja
Vincent Lin
Research Methodology Section Co-Lead
Research Methodology Section Co-Lead
Tahir is a rising Junior at Hickory High School in Chesapeake, VA. He's extremely interested in the pre-med track in college, with aspirations of becoming a dermatologist.
Vincent is a rising Junior at Hickory High School in Chesapeake, VA. He is interested in Biochemistry and Organic Chemistry.
Anika Dahagam
Jerry Chen
Cell and Molecular Biology Associate Lead
Lambert High School
Health and Medicine Section Associate Lead
and Article Writer
Jerry is a rising Junior He has aspirations of becoming a Dentist/Orthodontist. He has an aptitude for mathematics, and also find chemistry and english interesting.
JoAnna
Fancher
Akshaya Kondaveeti
JoAnna Fancher is a sophomore at Hickory High School in Virginia who has an interest in biochemistry.
Any high school student is welcome to be a participant in our Journal Club. Please use "Contact us" page to send us your information and you will be invited to join our Discord channel. Zoom links for meetings will be posted on GroupMe. Please review our Participation Guidelines here.
If you would like to present and join a specific team (Cell and Molecular Biology, Neuroscience, Health and Medicine or Research Methodology), please use "Contact us" page and send us your information. We recommend completion of an introductory High School Biology course. Our Presentation guidelines can be reviewed here.
Mentors
Dr. Ashish K. Khanna
Advisor
Dr. Ashish Khanna is professor of anesthesiology and vice-chair of research with the department of anesthesiology, division of critical care medicine at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC.
His research interests include prediction of post-operative respiratory and cardiac events on the regular nursing floor using wearable monitoring, use of large datasets for perioperative outcomes research, RAAS dysfunction in critically ill patients and use of novel vasopressors in shock states in the ICU. Dr. Khanna has more than 200 peer reviewed papers, two dozen book chapters, editorials, invited non-peer reviewed articles, and has been invited to talk about this work at prestigious national and international forums. He serves on the leadership of the Society of Critical Care Medicine as a past chair of the Discovery research network and member of the SCCM council. He chairs the ASA committee on critical care medicine, and is on the board of directors for the Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (SOCCA) and the American Society for Enhanced Recovery and Perioperative Medicine (ASER-PM). He has been awarded funding by FAER, NIH/NCATS KL2, NIH/NHLBI, Wake Forest intramural CTSI and several industry and foundation grants.
Dr. Aditi Rastogi
Advisor
Dr. Aditi Rastogi recently earned her PhD in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine from the University of Kansas Medical Center, where she spent over four years studying the molecular mechanisms driving the progression of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a form of early stage breast cancer, to invasive breast cancer. Her work focused on single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, uncovering how cancer cells interact with their surrounding tissue and identifying potential new therapeutic targets along the way. Her research focuses on single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, in vivo tumor modeling, and epithelial–stromal interactions in breast cancer, with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets through receptor–ligand interaction analysis. She has presented her work at national conferences including the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meetings.
Outside the lab, Aditi loves mentoring younger researchers and helping them build confidence with their own data and experiments. As an early-career scientist exploring her next steps in the field, she's excited to bring that same curiosity and enthusiasm to students in the Youth Journal Project, helping them fall in love with the process of scientific discovery.