Lara Ozkan is a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology majoring in Computer Science and Molecular Biology. Lara is committed to a career advancing women's health through innovation in technology and the application of computational tools to research.
At MIT, she has been an undergraduate researcher with the Media Lab's Conformable Decoders group where she has worked on breast cancer wearable ultrasound technologies. She also is working to discover the sex-specific differences in Alzheimer's Disease with Professor Manolis Kellis's computational biology group in the MIT Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Lara's achievements in computational biology research earned her the MIT Susan Hockfield Prize in Life Sciences and U.S. Presidential Scholar.
As a Scholar at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, Lara examined the ethical implications of genomics projects and developed AI ethics curricula for MIT computer science courses. She also gained experience with AI policy and healthcare through internships with Accenture Gen AI Risk/Ethics and pharmaceutical firms.
Lara is president and executive director of MIT Capital Partners, an organization that connects the entrepreneurship community with venture capital firms and supports underrepresented groups in entrepreneurship. Additionally, she serves as an Undergraduate Research Peer Ambassador and is a member of the MIT EECS Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. As part of the Schwarzman College of Computing Undergraduate Advisory Group, she advises on policies and programming to improve the student experience in interdisciplinary computing. Beyond Lara's research roles, she volunteers with MIT Codelt, teaching middle-school girls computer science. She also mentors children whose parents are impacted by cancer as a camp counselor with Camp Kesem.

As a Marshall Scholar, Lara will pursue an MPhil in Biological Science at the Cambridge Sanger Institute and an MRes in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the Imperial College London.