SACS Meharry

09/02/2026

Congratulations to Judith D**e and Destiny Pounds! These SACS students have been selected for the Maternal Health Fellowship through the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) network and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) IMPROVE initiative.

The two-year fellowship trains clinical investigators to improve maternal and neonatal care through three components: Career Development, Practice and Networking. It focuses on observational research methods so fellows can conduct reproducible research, generate real-world evidence, lead multi-institutional network studies and compete successfully for future research funding.

Read more about their accomplishment on out website, and help us to celebrate them in the comments! https://meharry.edu/news/dike-and-pounds-receive-maternal-health-fellowship/

08/26/2026

Dr. Naw Safrin Sattar, faculty member at Meharry Medical College School of Applied Computational Sciences, has been selected for the prestigious Visiting Faculty Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — a lab that has produced 16 Nobel laureates.

Out of a national pool, Dr. Sattar is one of only 13 faculty chosen to work at Berkeley Lab this year, and she's bringing two SACS master's students with her. Her project, "Accelerating Scientific Discovery through Graph-based Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation," was awarded ~$40,000 in DOE Office of Science funding — and she's been personally invited to apply for the Genesis Mission AI initiative, one of the largest AI research investments in the country.

This is more than an individual honor. It's proof that a young, HBCU-based computational sciences school is training co-creators of cutting-edge AI and science.

Huge congratulations to Dr. Sattar and the SACS students joining her at Berkeley Lab. 👏

👉 Read the full interview to hear directly from Dr. Sattar about the research, the students, and what this moment means for Meharry, SACS, and Nashville's next generation of scientists.

Dr. Naw Safrin Sattar’s selection for the Visiting Faculty Program reflects what happens when an HBCU-based computational sciences school insists on building at the frontier, not observing it from the sidelines “It reframes SACS and Meharry more broadly as upstream innovators in AI-enabled scien...

07/01/2026

Congratulations to Brian Strong, Broderick Bellard, Grace Scanlan, India Scruggs and Justin Irick, the Summer 2026 NIH R25 Scholars for Meharry School of Applied Computational Sciences!

They will spend 10 weeks participating in summer training and conducting research with a faculty mentor. They will also receive a $10,000 stipend and additional funding for summer housing.

The NIH R25 Scholars program is made possible through a grant awarded to Meharry, Fisk University, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) from the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Meharry is the principal on the grant, the only HBCU to serve as lead on an NIH R25 grant.

Brian, Broderick, Grace, India and Justin will be joined by students from Fisk. In addition to faculty mentorship, they will have access to NIH resources and attend seminars and workshops at Meharry SACS, the Fisk School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and the Department of Biomedical Informatics at VUMC. Seminar topics include education and career pathways, research topics and methods, professional skills, and the latest advances in biomedical data science.

Congratulations, all! Please help us celebrate these students.

06/25/2026

Congratulations to our student Ernest Taku, whose paper “Personalized Type 1 Diabetes Management: Reinforcement Learning-Based Insulin Dosing and Glucose Forecasting” has been published in JMIR Diabetes. Co-authors are Drs. Vibhuti Gupta and Ashutosh Singhal.

Read the paper at https://lnkd.in/gmqynwT2

06/08/2026

🎉 Huge congratulations to Jaylin Dyson, Judith D**e, Michael Paul, Sade Graves, and Markis' Hamilton for taking home FIRST PLACE in the Compassion Challenge! 🏆

These brilliant students developed a groundbreaking solution to green gentrification, creating a community-centered model that protects longtime residents while building generational wealth — all backed by real data science.

Their work isn't just impressive academically — it has real potential to transform communities like Hayti, NC and beyond. A well-deserved $10,000 prize and so much more ahead for this incredible team! Congratulations, everyone!

Read more about their accomplishment on our site.

06/01/2026

What if quantum computing could save lives? 💡

Dr. Pushpita Chatterjee at Meharry's School of Applied Computational Sciences is finding out. Her study, supported by The National Institutes of Health, compares classical and quantum machine learning to predict triple-negative breast cancer progression (TNBC): one of the most aggressive types of breast cancer, and one that disproportionately affects Black women.

"Quantum computing can process information in exciting new ways that traditional computing cannot match," says Dr. Chatterjee.

This research doesn't just push science forward — it also creates opportunities for the next generation, funding two research assistants gaining hands-on experience in bioinformatics and quantum-enhanced algorithms.

This is what Meharry's mission looks like in action.

To learn more about her research, navigate to our site: https://meharry.edu/news/chatterjee-to-test-quantum-machine-learning-for-breast-cancer-outcomes/

05/29/2026

🚀 Congratulations to our own Sade Graves, who is heading to NASA this summer!

Fresh off earning her M.S. in Biomedical Data Science from Meharry SACS, she will be joining the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama as a NASA intern.

From June 1 to August 7, she'll be working on the ECLSS Trace Contaminant Control project, developing analytical chemistry methods to detect trace air contaminants, supporting AI-based data analysis, and helping prepare the laboratory for hardware testing. In other words: helping make sure the air astronauts breathe in space is safe.

What makes her story especially inspiring is how seamlessly her graduate work connects to this opportunity. Her capstone thesis examined outdoor air pollution and its association with cardiovascular disease — and now she's applying those same principles to one of the most challenging enclosed environments in existence. From Earth's atmosphere to the International Space Station. That's the kind of translational thinking we love to see from our graduates.

This is exactly what a degree in Biomedical Data Science can look like in practice — rigorous science, real-world impact, and now, quite literally, out-of-this-world application.

We are so proud of you, Sade! Go show NASA what our graduates are made of! 🌌

05/26/2026

Graduate school without the red tape? Sign yourself up!

Most programs still want:
❌ GRE scores
❌ recommendation letters
❌ interviews
❌ endless essays

At Meharry SACS, we cut all of that out for our new graduate certificates in:
🔐 Cybersecurity
🤖 AI for Health Systems
🧬 Bioinformatics

What you get instead:
✨ Job-ready AI + data science training
✨ Finish in as little as 4 months
✨ 100% live online evening classes
✨ Credits that stack into a master’s or Ph.D.
✨ Real Meharry graduate rigor with remote learning flexibility

If grad school felt overwhelming before, this might be your sign to revisit it.

🔗 meharry.edu/academics/schools/school-of-applied-computational-sciences/sacs-programs-overview/

05/22/2026

Don't forget to join us for Build with AI! This student-led Google Developer Group event will allow you to learn the AI tricks that will get you ahead while making memories with your fellow students. Join us for hands-on training, lunch and the opportunity to network with your peers. Whether you come for resume building or relationship building, this event will be one for the books.

Register now: https://gdg.community.dev/gdg-on-campus-school-of-applied-computational-science-at-meharry-medical-college-nashville-united-states-of-america/

05/22/2026

Congratulations to the brilliant class of 2026! It has been a joy to capture your journey and to watch you all grow. We can't wait to see what you all do next!