NYU Tandon student shines in the 2025 Merck Innovation Cup
Yusheng (Jason) Zhang was a member of the winning team in the pharmaceutical giant’s annual competition
Each year, Merck KGaA brings a handful of the world’s most promising Ph.D. students and post-docs, chosen from thousands of applicants, to the company's headquarters near Frankfurt, Germany, to compete in the Innovation Cup.
The competition challenges participants to develop innovative solutions for unmet medical and customer needs, and it’s structured as a week-long boot camp, where students learn about R&D within the pharmaceutical industry, meet past participants and winners, and network with industry professionals while collaborating on ideas.
This year, Yusheng (Jason) Zhang — a Global Ph.D. Fellow who works in both New York City and Abu Dhabi at Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Khalil Ramadi’s Lab for Advanced Neuroengineering and Translational Medicine — teamed up with five peers from around the globe to develop an artificial intelligence agent aimed at making manufacturing processes more efficient, less costly, and more sustainable.
“Since participants apply to categories that match their interests, I joined the Smart Manufacturing team, while other groups focused on areas such as Digital Health or Drug Discovery. This experience allowed me to broaden my perspective beyond my doctoral research in ingestible health devices,” Zhang explains. “As participants come from across the globe and are grouped into interdisciplinary teams by Merck, I had the opportunity to connect with a diverse cohort of peers and was able to closely interact not only with my teammates but also with members of other teams.”
While he is not at liberty to reveal more about the new AI agent, because Merck reserves the right to implement it commercially, it garnered the top prize of €20,000, shared among the six teammates. (Travel, accommodations, and food expenses for all the competitors were paid for by the company, as well.)
“It was a great experience,” Zhang, who anticipates finishing his doctoral studies in 2027, says. “I’m grateful to Merck, and also to Professor Ramadi, for encouraging me to apply in the first place.”
“We are all really proud of Jason for this incredible accomplishment,” Ramadi says. “An important part of the Ph.D. experience is exposing oneself to new and different ideas, and this means engaging with other bright minds outside of the lab.”
