Annika Kumar

Annika Kumar is a Master’s student in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University, where she conducts research at both the Big Ideas Lab and the Hoffman Lab. With a strong foundation in bioengineering and data science from the University of Washington, Annika is passionate about computational bioengineering, biomechanics, and the ethical application of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Her work spans machine learning, wearable tech, and molecular biomechanics, with projects focused on disease prediction, health equity, and precision modeling of cellular mechanisms.

Annika’s diverse experience includes internships at the FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research and the Institute for Systems Biology, as well as leadership roles in student-driven innovation. As Finance Lead for the award-winning LegUp Prosthetics team through Bioengineers Without Borders, she contributed to the development of affordable pediatric prosthetics that address global healthcare disparities. At Duke, she continues to build interdisciplinary expertise by conducting research using wearable device data and machine learning to build disease prediction models as well as computational tools to simulate protein-protein interactions in the body. She also serves as a Graduate Coach at InGenius Prep and a Writer at AI in Medicine.

Deeply committed to advancing health technologies for social good, Annika aims to pursue a Ph.D. in computational bioengineering. Her goal is to help shape the future of accessible, data-driven healthcare through a combination of rigorous research, technical innovation, and community-centered design. Whether modeling protein recruitment dynamics or evaluating fairness in AI algorithms, Annika is driven by a clear mission: to leverage emerging technologies to solve complex, human-centered problems in medicine.

• Bachelor of Science

• Duke University
• University of Washington College of Engineering

• Sigma Xi The Scientific Research Honor Society