Three LGS PhD Students Awarded Shankar Fellowships for Innovative Diabetes Projects
By Karina Antenucci
The Emory Global Diabetes Research Center’s Diabetes Translational Accelerator aims to solve big problems in diabetes by supporting PhD students in launching their doctoral dissertations as commercially viable startups in partnership with their advisors.
The Lakshmi and Subramonian Shankar Fellowships support this goal by providing financial support for doctoral students who want to solve an important and pressing problem in diabetes and related conditions through entrepreneurship. In 2024, three Laney Graduate School PhD students received the Shankar Fellowship: Biomedical Engineering student Christopher Bain, Biomedical Engineering student Abdulraouf Abbas, and Computer Science and Informatics student Chase Fensore.
“The three fellows we selected demonstrated traits of successful founders, had excellent relationships with their PhD advisors, and were technically skilled but willing to leave their comfort zone,” said Jithin Sam Varghese, PhD, assistant professor of global health at Rollins School of Public Health. “When reviewing the ideas that were submitted, we were looking for scientifically and technically robust solutions that address a persistent problem in the management of diabetes.”
The DTA team serves as a bridge to connect the Shankar Fellows with the broader Atlanta entrepreneurship ecosystem and Emory’s global partners, identify advisors for their startups, build their technical and managerial skills, and obtain further funding to propel their ventures.
The fellowships are also part of a broader partnership of EGDRC with IIT Madras, the premier engineering school in India, to leverage each other’s strengths in healthcare and technology. Additionally, the fellows are eligible for assistance from the Shankar Innovation Fund to translate their research for the market.
Here, this year’s three Shankar Fellows expressed what this award means to them and shared details on their bold, innovative projects:
Abdulraouf Abbas
Advisor: James Dahlman, PhD
What this award means: Diabetes significantly affected Abbas’ father, other family members, and close friends. This award represents Abbas’ continued commitment to work toward developing translational medicines for patients in need.
His project: Oral lipid nanoparticle for delivering mRNA to the pancreas and other key tissues
RNA therapies have the potential to restore insulin-producing function in affected diabetes populations or prevent the development of diabetes through tolerating vaccines. Abbas is focusing on developing a safe, effective, and scalable lipid nanoparticle delivery system that can be used for therapeutic purposes to restore the cells that make insulin in the pancreas.
Christopher Bain
Advisor: Dr. Wilbur Lam, MD, PhD
What this award means: Professionally, Bain’s primary goal is to transition his research into a startup or company that could revolutionize non-invasive screening technologies, and this fellowship is an invaluable step toward achieving that goal.
His project:Low-cost, smartphone-based peripheral artery disease screening tool using computer vision
Bain’s research focuses on using deep learning, specifically computer vision, to screen for peripheral arterial disease. PAD is caused by a buildup of fatty plaque in the large blood vessels in the legs, which can lead to pain during exercise or even at rest and increases the risk of heart attack and limb amputation. He aims to develop and validate a computer vision algorithm that can analyze images of a patient’s leg, either taken at home or in a clinic, and generate a risk assessment for PAD, ultimately making screening more accessible.
Chase Fensore
Advisor: Joyce Ho, PhD
What this award means: Diabetes and similar metabolic conditions have impacted Fensore’s friends and family, and he sees this fellowship as an opportunity to build human-centered technology that has a practical impact on patients’ daily lives.
His project: Mobile application for management of gestational diabetes
Fensore is developing a remote patient monitoring solution for pregnant individuals with gestational diabetes. GD affects 10% of U.S. pregnancies and 14% globally. If it is poorly managed, it has serious long-term health risks associated with it for both mother and child. The key challenge that Fensore hopes to address is that mothers must rapidly adapt to complex lifestyle changes and blood sugar regulation in a short timeframe after a GD diagnosis. His goal is to simplify GD management for patients and healthcare providers throughout pregnancy with trustworthy education and health-tracking tools to improve outcomes.
The application for the 2025 Shankar Fellows cohort is now open. Varghese noted that ideal projects leverage new or existing technology solutions to develop affordable products that have the potential to grow into commercially viable startups (either for-profit or non-profit).
“We are looking for bold and driven PhD students who are willing to fail—and chase success if they do,” he said.
Discover more about the Lakshmi and Subramonian Shankar Fellowship and the Diabetes Translational Accelerator here.