Two students in lab coats and safety goggles examine green fluorescence on a computer screen.
Undergraduate student Iliya Voytsyshyn, left, has developed an app that helps quantify the growth patterns of neuronal cells in brain organoid models. He works in the lab of neuroscientist Kyle Fink with graduate student Klaudia Braczyk, right. In the photo below, Voytsyshyn discusses his research with graduate student Braczyk and principal investigator Kyle Fink, at the Fink Lab at UC Davis Health. (Wayne Tilcock/UC Davis Health)

Developing Apps to Investigate Neurological Disorders

How one UC Davis student imagined systems to accelerate lab breakthroughs

  • by Ginger M. Welsh

Iliya Voytsyshyn, a fourth-year systems and synthetic biology major from Ukraine, entered UC Davis with plans to study cancer. That initial goal grew into a fascination with tools that fuse biology, systems design and gene editing to re-engineer cells.

Voytsyshyn chose UC Davis because the campus offered early access to labs and hands-on undergraduate research. Interest in cancer cells that divide indefinitely versus normal cells that die off led him to volunteer in campus labs that study these questions — first the Xu Lab, then the Fink Lab at UC Davis Health.

“I knew UC Davis had a large faculty, a renowned animal science program and a strong marine institute,” Voytsyshyn said. “My focus later shifted toward molecular biology and gene editing, and right now, I learn how to design and plan complex projects, master experimental testing and bridge the gap between computational approaches and wet-lab bench science. But my original goal remains — I draw inspiration from nature, such as bacteria, and use it to develop, adapt and modify novel biomolecular tools.”

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