About Zhanlin Chen

Born in Huidong, China, Zhanlin identifies as a member of the Hakka sub-ethnic group, whose name translates to "guest families" in Mandarin, reflecting their history of migration during periods of unrest in China. When Zhanlin was 12 years old, he immigrated to the United States with his mother, who worked as a cancer biologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. While volunteering at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, he witnessed the passing of a young girl with brain cancer—an experience that inspired him to pursue a career in medicine.

After high school, Zhanlin attended Yale University, where he earned bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. He later completed a master's degree in Statistics and Data Science, supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Outside the classroom, Zhanlin conducted research with Professor Mark Gerstein as part of the ENCODE Consortium, using high-performance computing to better understand the human genome. He led numerous computational biology projects and is the first author of publications in Bioinformatics, Nature Communications, and Science Advances. Beyond research, he was an active member of the Yale Concert Band and the Yale Bands Saxophone Quartet, performing on alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones.

During the gap year before medical school, Zhanlin interned at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Perception Systems Group, where he developed machine learning–based navigation and path-planning algorithms for planetary rovers. Mentored by Shreyansh Daftry, he published several conference papers, authored a textbook chapter on planetary rovers, and is named as a primary inventor on a NASA patent.

During medical school at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Zhanlin worked at Intuitive Surgical as a Product Manager Intern, where he participated in the development of force-feedback instrumentation for the da Vinci 5 robotic surgical system. The experience deepened his interest in the intersection of surgery, robotics, and medical technology, providing firsthand exposure to the design and translation of next-generation surgical platforms. Zhanlin is now a cardiothoracic surgery resident at Northwestern Medicine, where his clinical and academic interests lie at the intersection of cardiothoracic surgery, artificial intelligence, robotics, data science, and high-performance computing. Building on his experiences in computational biology, autonomous robotics, and surgical technology, he is passionate about translating advances in engineering and computation into innovations that improve surgical decision-making, perioperative care, and patient outcomes. As a surgeon-scientist, his goal is to bring supercomputing to the bedside by identifying real-world clinical challenges and developing data-driven technologies that advance the future of medicine.