Tejas S. Athni

Tejas Athni is an undergraduate student at Stanford University, originally from Macon, Georgia.

Currently, he is a student researcher in the Mordecai Lab (Department of Biology, Stanford), where he investigates the global distributions and thermal drivers of disease-vectoring mosquitoes using computational epidemiology and machine learning methods. Tejas is also a member of the Rohatgi Lab (Department of Biochemistry, Stanford), where he has worked with a team investigating cell signaling pathways to help elucidate a new biochemical mechanism regulating heart development.

Tejas has been published in various peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as Developmental Cell and Ecology Letters. He has been recognized with numerous national and international awards, including the Goldwater Scholarship, the Coca-Cola Scholarship, the Neuroscience Research Prize from the American Academy of Neurology, and the American Statistical Association Award from the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair. He has presented and discussed his research at various conferences, pharmaceutical companies, and public speaking venues such as TEDxPeachtree.

Tejas is also a volunteer EMT with Santa Clara County, CA and an officer and director for Stanford EMS. He is a co-founder of Perfusion, a CPR education and legislative advocacy organization dedicated to providing emergency medical training to students from low-resource regions of the Bay Area. In his free time, Tejas enjoys competing on Stanford’s club ultimate frisbee team.

Previously, Tejas has been involved with plant biology and neuro-oncology research at Fort Valley State University (Fort Valley, GA) and Karmanos Cancer Institute (Detroit, MI). He was a member of a research team investigating phytochemicals as possible treatment options for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain cancer, has worked to identify the palynological reasons why two medicinal plants are approaching extinction, and has co-instructed student research programs for the United States Department of Agriculture.