Alexandra Rodzinski
Degree: Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences
College/School: Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Alexandra Rodzinski had always planned to attend medical school, but believed she could improve the world on a bigger scale by going into medical research instead of health care.
She is the first FIU student to earn a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences in the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. Working in the lab of Professor Sakhrat Khizroev, she was a part of groundbreaking, award-winning research in the fields of targeted drug delivery to treat cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. During her Ph.D. dissertation project, she applied pioneering, patented FIU nanotechnology to cure cancer in animal models—winning the FIU University Graduate School Provost Award for Outstanding Paper. Alexandra and the team had previously worked on using nanoparticles to wirelessly connect the brain of a mouse to a computer– research that landed on the list of Discover magazine’s top 100 science stories of 2015.
Her studies were selected for presentation at numerous conferences including the prestigious American Association for Cancer Research Annual conference. Alexandra was also recently selected for an award by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, a leading community in biomedical sciences.
Born in Ukraine and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Alexandra got a B.S. in Molecular Biology from Stetson University.