About

Akshaya Annapragada is an MD/PhD student at Johns Hopkins, pursuing her PhD in Biomedical Engineering advised by Victor Velculescu. Akshaya holds an AB magna cum laude with highest honors in Applied Mathematics and an SM in Bioengineering, both from Harvard. In her PhD work, Akshaya builds non-invasive blood tests for early cancer detection and novel machine learning methods to illuminate the ?dark genome? of repeat elements. These technologies have led to 5 pending patents and a spin-off company Akshaya co-founded. Akshaya has authored 20 publications (9 first-author) in journals including Cancer Discovery, Science Translational Medicine, and Nature Medicine. Her honors include the AACR Women in Cancer Research Award, the NIH F30 Fellowship, and Forbes 30 Under 30. Outside the lab, Akshaya co-founded The Community Health Literacy Project, leads the JHU Association of Women Student MD-PhDs and was previously managing editor of the Harvard Political Review.

Education

Johns Hopkins University

Ph.D. , Bioengineering

Class of 2026

Other Educations

Awards & Publications