BioBus New England Fellows

Lily He is currently pursuing a PhD in Neuroscience and earned a B.S. and M.S. in Neuroscience from Brandeis University. She studies mechanisms of control of anemone and jellyfish stinging behavior in the lab of Nicholas Bellono at Harvard, and previously studied neural circuits in the crab stomach in the lab of Eve Marder. Lily has advised and mentored many undergraduate students over the years and hopes to teach and inspire young scientists to explore the natural world.

Josh Pace graduated from the University of Arizona in 2019 with a V.S. in Biomedical Engineering. Josh is currently a Bioengineering Ph.D. student at Northeastern University. He is working on detecting rare tumor cells that circulate in the blood in real time utilizing light and fluorescence. Josh enjoys working with students of all ages and showing them how fascinating and neat science can be!

Mary joined BioBus as a Community Science Fellow in 2021. She is a current PhD student in the department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard. Her research focuses on developing computational and probabilistic methods to predict mRNA translation. Mary is originally from Louisville, Kentucky and studied Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis for undergrad. She is passionate about science education, particularly in elementary schools, and is excited to be a part of BioBus programs in New England. In her spare time she enjoys photography, baking, and spending time outdoors.

Nicole Voce received a dual B.S. in Physics and Math from James Madison University and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Physics, with a concentration in biophysics, at Northeastern University. At James Madison, Nicole worked in a soft matter lab, studying the buckling of thin cylindrical shells for applications in shape-changing technologies. As a Ph.D. student, she pivoted from soft matter to biophysics and is currently studying how confinement and obstacles in model cell membranes affect the diffusion of membrane components. She loves teaching students about the intersection between math, physics, and biology and how interdisciplinary research is done!

Maati McKinney is a current Ph.D. student in the Molecules, Cells & Organisms program at Harvard University. She graduated from Spelman College in 2021 with a bachelor’s in Mathematics, and is broadly interested in math-bio research. Maati has tutored subjects in math and science since high school, working for three years as a Directed Supplemental Instructor for Calculus and Pre-Calculus at Spelman, and has experience working with students of all ages from both tutoring and her years as a outdoor summer camp counselor. When she’s not coding in the lab or learning new subjects, she likes to relax by solving crossword puzzles, knitting, or geocaching. Maati is eager to teach and learn from the next generation of young scientists, and is greatly looking forward to her first year as a BioBus Community Science Fellow.

Helena is a Physics Ph.D. student at Harvard University, where she studies the olfactory system of the nematode C. elegans. She wants to learn about how these worms use their small brains to achieve goals like detecting an attractive odorant and moving towards it. Before this, she got her B.A. in Physics in 2019 from Princeton University, where she worked on phase separation models of proteins inside cells. She enjoys talking to young scientists and is very excited to spend another year with BioBus!