Perisa Ashar
Masters Student
Biomedical Engineering
About Me:
Perisa Ashar is a Masters student and mentee in the BIG IDEAs Lab at Duke University. She earned her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke and is currently completing her M.S., focusing on digital health, wearable biosignals, and AI-driven physiological modeling for cardiovascular risk and sleep health. Her work leverages longitudinal wearable data, such as ECG, PPG, and activity signals, to study disease trajectories and advance equitable digital medicine.Perisa is currently leading a causal analysis using the Project Baseline Health Study to examine whether sustained declines in wearable-derived physical activity influence progression along the heart failure continuum. She also contributes to projects in pulse arrival time analysis, fairness in wearable AI research, rPPG pipelines, and ECG-based sleep modeling.
Outside the lab, she enjoys exploring Durham cafés, walking, and reading. A former Duke representative on NBC’s College Bowl, she’s especially skilled at trivia. Fueled by iced matcha lattes and inspired by Dr. Katherine Johnson, Perisa lives by the advice, “Progress matters more than perfection,” celebrates wins with ice cream, and hopes to travel to all seven continents.
Awards, Honors, and Distinctions
- 2023 Pratt Research Fellowship
- 2024-2025 National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges Scholar
- 2025 ACM SIGHPC Computational and Data Science Fellowship
- 2025-2026 BME Research Fellowship
- 2026 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
