Venturing out into something unfamiliar—whether it’s trying a demanding new hobby, starting an entirely new chapter in your life, or taking on complex biostatistical research—can be daunting. It requires courage, good old-fashioned Husky tenacity, and the support of a community. When Aili Toyli decided to leave her hometown of Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, for the wild wonder of the Keweenaw, she already had two of those three elements on her side—and she was confident she’d find the third at Michigan Tech.
“I came for a visit in the summer and again for the Leading Scholar program. I was really impressed with the university and its collaborative culture,” said Toyli. “Tech promotes the mindset that everyone can succeed, while still pushing students to meet high standards.”
Toyli’s interest in Tech started with a legacy. Her father is an engineer who passed his love of mathematics on to his daughter.
“He definitely loves crunching the numbers and gaining information and insight through math,” said Toyli. “I really liked math in high school. In trying to figure out how that could be applied to a career, I realized I really want to use math to solve real-world problems, and I felt like statistics was a good fit for that.”
Out of Her Comfort Zone, Into the Keweenaw
With her compass firmly pointed north, Toyli made the seven-hour journey to her home away from home. She immediately saw opportunities for adventure on the ski slopes of Mont Ripley, the waters of Lake Superior, and the hiking trails that decorate Keweenaw forests like veins on a leaf. Attending college far from everyone and everything she knew took courage, but on campus, she found a community of people who had faced and overcome the same challenge.
“I know people who go to colleges where everyone’s an hour and a half to two hours from home, and I feel like they don’t necessarily make the same level of connections with their classmates when they’re going home a lot of weekends,” said Toyli. “At Tech, I was having weekend adventures with people I met pretty early on, because everyone’s looking for something to do and to get to know people.”
Even among like-minded Huskies, making friends took effort.
“It was really good for me to come so far away and be pushed out of my comfort zone. But those first few months were definitely a little bit lonely,” said Toyli.
Aili Toyli formed a strong bond with her fellow rowing club members during her time at Tech.
The rowing club schedule is demanding, with practice five days a week.
Their gruelling schedule pays off in regattas, and in the strong friendships they form.
Her cure for homesickness, loneliness, and the freshman blues was to try new things. She joined the Rowing Club at Michigan Tech in her first year, pursuing a sport she had never tried before. Before long, she had a routine that built community by bonding with the same group of people five days a week during practice either in the Student Development Complex or on the Keweenaw Waterway. That routine of camaraderie carried her through the sometimes-choppy waters of college for three years, building the capacity to overcome any challenge.
“This year, we had a day where we rowed from our docks, which are just east of campus, all the way to Breakers Beach, and then we switched out the crews. It’s more than 10 miles one way, but some of us, myself included, rowed there and back. That was a fun challenge, an interesting way to see things outside,” said Toyli.
Between her routine of studies and rowing, she spent her weekends hiking and skiing, taking advantage of everything campus and the Keweenaw has to offer.
“I got involved in a lot. This is a time of life when you have a lot of opportunities to try new things that you might never get the chance to do again,” said Toyli.
Math is a Place for Friendship
Getting to know her peers and trying new things went beyond outdoor activities. One of her first classes in the mathematical sciences department, an exploring numbers course, had her solving open-ended problems side-by-side with other incoming math students. Toyli said the class went a long way toward building connections in her department. Those bonds deepened over the years when she joined an unbreakable chain of mentorship as both a tutor and pupil in the Math Learning Center. Even on slow days, when not many students come in seeking formal tutoring sessions, she and her coworkers still gather there to offer each other guidance and talk about their studies.
“The math department as a whole is very social, and that’s a part of its personality. People are very genuinely curious about problems, love to learn, and love to talk about what they’re learning. I’ve really enjoyed that aspect of things,” said Toyli.
Faculty members also encouraged Toyli’s curiosity. In tight-knit classes with Ray Molzon, associate teaching professor of mathematical sciences, she and her peers were encouraged to take initiative in their learning experiences. Toyli proactively took her educational adventures a step further by attending the Iowa Summer Institute of Biostatistics, where she applied her skills as a statistician to the medical field, studying breast cancer risk factors across Iowa. She had found her research niche.
“That definitely strengthened my interest in biostatistics. I got to work with medical data and do statistics, but also it really helped me understand what that field is like, and what work in that field is like,” said Toyli.
A Network of Interdisciplinary Research
Toyli’s drive to do research that solves real-world problems led her to two of the most important connections she would make at Michigan Tech — Weihua Zhou, associate professor of health informatics and applied computing, and Qiuying Sha, distinguished professor of mathematical sciences. She first met Zhou at a mathematics department undergraduate research forum her first year at Tech, where they connected over her interest in medical applications of statistics.
“We have multiple successful undergraduate researchers in the department, and Aili definitely is one of our most successful students,” said Zhou.
Toyli’s first project under his mentorship involved examining brain scans of patients with two types of Lewy body dementia — one with Lewy bodies, and one with Parkinson’s disease dementia, which are very similar forms of the disease. It built upon existing research into whether they are two different diseases or the same disease presenting symptoms differently. The project had a deep personal meaning.
“Alzheimer’s disease is something that there are pretty high rates of in my family. So I was very familiar with the disease and the burden it can place on people and their families going into this,” said Toyli. When Dr. Zhou presented about his research tied to that, that was definitely a big part of the reason I reached out to him, because it was an issue I cared a lot about already.”
Zhou’s experience mentoring over 20 undergraduate students in his lab has taught him that personal connection is an asset for many young researchers.
“For undergraduate students, their motivation is very important,” said Zhou. “It comes from two places: one is from the students themselves, and the other is from the faculty. In our lab, we are working on very practical projects. That means they can feel, even see, the impact of their work and are motivated by that.”
While Zhou led the applied computing side of the project, Sha provided guidance on Toyli’s statistical approach. Since Toyli hadn’t yet taken many advanced statistics courses, she delved into many concepts independently, bringing questions to Sha as needed.
“I’m very impressed by Aili,” said Sha. “When she encounters challenges, she takes the initiative to explore the solutions on her own before coming back with thoughtful questions. She’s very confident in moving from learning concepts to applying them independently in research.”
Toyli published “Comparison of Cerebral ECD Perfusion in Patients with Dementia with Lewy Bodies and Parkinson’s Disease Dementia” in Nuclear Medicine Communications based on this research in 2024. Then, her final summer before graduation, she took on another project under Zhou and Sha’s advisement. Toyli took up and revised a manuscript left by an alumn reviewing interactions between the heart and brain. It was accepted and published in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine as “The Heart–Brain Axis: Unraveling the Interconnections Between Cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s Diseases” in 2025.
“This research helped me learn a lot of clinical insight into the biology that we’re looking at,” said Toyli. “Having gone through the process of preparing these papers for publication, it gets easier every time. There are different tricks for handling my data, for the draft and revision process, that I’ve learned to make it go more smoothly each time.”
Her pursuit of research opportunities also earned Toyli funding from the Copper Shores Community Health Foundation. Her research was included in a $429,153 National Institutes of Health R15 grant through Tech’s Undergraduate Research Internship Program (URIP) for two consecutive years. She received URIP funding for her research entitled “Statistical Analysis of the Heart-Brain Connection Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Clinical Records, and Genetic Markers in 2024-25,” and for “Hierarchical Clustering to Identify Factors Associated with Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease” in 2025-26.
“I really think the collaboration between faculty at Michigan Tech provides a more comprehensive learning experience,” said Sha. “Aili works in statistics, and now also works in applied computing, so this interdisciplinary research experience definitely plays a great role in her future after she graduates.”
After graduation, Toyli plans to return to the University of Iowa for a master’s degree in biostatistics. As her quest for knowledge continues, she confidently shares her advice to future Huskies tenaciously seeking adventures in research and interdisciplinary collaboration.
“Mistakes and feeling lost and confused are part of the process initially. Take it one step at a time and continually learn as you work. You have a team supporting you, and small mistakes will happen over the course of the research; it’s just about addressing them, learning from them, and moving on,” said Toyli.
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