J. Rene Canady

J. Rene Canady's career goal is to improve the health of the Black population. She firmly believes that health is a Human Right and her career goal is to work at making biomedical health more accessible to underserved populations by starting an organization dedicated to working with improving the ethics of race-related research, making biotechnology more accessible, and pushing for more fair treatment in healthcare.

In 2020, she received a bachelor's degree in Bioengineering with a minor in French at the University of Pittsburgh. She was born and raised in New Kensington, PA, and travels frequently. In May 2019, she was a student ambassador to South Africa and conducted research on the intercultural development of study abroad students. From Summer 2018 to Spring 2020, she had fun working in the Visualization and Image Analysis lab on FingerSight, a device for the blind. She was also very involved with the National Society of Black Engineers, where her identity as a Black woman scientist could thrive through leadership. She remains very connected to the Pitt EXCEL program, an engineering program for underrepresented minorities under Yvette Moore. Being a part of Pitt EXCEL has led her to take part in engaging her racial identity from an academic perspective and seeing the status of her family members made her more aware of how health can be dictated by racial dynamics. At Washington University of Saint Louis, she will do interdisciplinary research connecting the social relations in biomedical laboratories to community health outcomes. Rene is both a fellow of the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Fellowship Program and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.