2024 Events

WED, September 25, 2024, from 12:00-1:00 pm (virtual)

SPEAKER: Dr. Samaneh Nasiri 
               Assistant Professor 
               Department of Biomedical Informatics 
               Emory University School of Medicine

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Neurology, and Neuroscience at Emory School of Medicine. My research leverages machine learning and signal processing to advance health and wellness applications. Dr. Nasiri completed my Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics at Emory in 2020, earning the Best Thesis Award for my work. Dr. Nasiri then conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School, focusing on AI-driven solutions for sleep analysis and disease prediction. In 2022, Dr. Nasiri joined the McCance Center for Brain Health at MGH as a junior faculty member to continue my independent research on AI for mental health. Her expertise in theoretical signal processing, machine learning, and clinical collaboration equips me to tackle complex medical challenges. 

Publications:

• Wolfgang Ganglberger, Samaneh Nasiri, Haoqi Sun, Soriul Kim, Chol Shin, M Brandon Westover, Robert J Thomas, Refining sleep staging accuracy: Transfer learning coupled with scorability models, Sleep, 2024;, zsae202, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsae202
•  Einizade A, Nasiri S, Sardouie SH, Clifford GD. ProductGraphSleepNet: Sleep staging using product spatio-temporal graph learning with attentive temporal aggregation. Neural Networks 2023 July 1; 164: pp. 667-680, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2023.05.016
• Samaneh Nasiri, Wolfgang Ganglberger, Haoqi Sun, Robert J Thomas, M Brandon Westover, Exploiting labels from multiple experts in automated sleep scoring, Sleep, Volume 46, Issue 5, May 2023, zsad034, https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsad034

For questions, please contact Michael Proctor at michael.proctor@emory.edu. 

WED, August 28, 2024, from 12:00-1:00 pm (virtual)

SPEAKER: ZUZANA KOSCOVA, MS 
               Research Engineer 
               Department of Biomedical Informatics 
               Emory University School of Medicine

Zuzana Koscova is a Research Engineer in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Emory University's School of Medicine. She holds a Master's in Biomedical Engineering and Bioinformatics from Brno University of Technology. Before joining Emory, she worked as a part-time software engineer at the Institute of Scientific Instruments under the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her expertise lies in machine learning, signal processing, and data analysis for extracting information from medical data, with a current focus on cardiovascular disease and sleep research.

For questions, please contact Michael Proctor at michael.proctor@emory.edu. 

WED, June 12, 2024, from 12:00-1:00 pm (virtual)

SPEAKER: ALASDAIR GENT, PhD. 
               Bioinformatician 
               Trauma, Acute and Critical Care 
               Duke University School of Medicine

ALASDAIR GENT, PhD, was born and raised in Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands, and pursued my undergrad/master's in physics at the University of St. Andrews. After being offered an opportunity to participate in a fellowship program at Georgia Tech., I moved to Atlanta in the fall of 2016 (imagine my shock at the climate!), where I attained another master’s and my Ph.D. in astrophysics. 

Alasdair is a Bioinformatician at Duke University. I moved from physics to the bioinformatics field in early 2023 due to my interest in machine learning and the desire to contribute to developing tools to advance our knowledge of healthcare and improve patient outcomes. His current research interests lie in developing, improving, and implementing advanced warning systems for likely septic deterioration and applying modern deep learning paradigms to waveform data (ECG, PPG, etc.) collected at the bedside.  

After working as a Postdoc for around a year in the BMI department at Emory, our lab transitioned from Emory to Duke. However, we still maintain several projects in collaboration with researchers and clinicians at Emory, which is fantastic.

For questions, please contact Michael Proctor at michael.proctor@emory.edu. 

Tuesday, March 26, 2024 from 11:30-12:30pm (virtual)

Elizabeth Shenkman, PhD is the Chair of the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics, the Co-Director of the University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) and the Director for the University of Florida Institute for Child Health Policy. Dr. Shenkman is a health outcomes researcher with a research focus on: 1) determining which combinations of health care delivery, community, and patient factors influence quality and outcomes of care; and 2) developing and testing corresponding evidence-based strategies to reduce disparities in health outcomes among underserved populations.  

Dr. Shenkman leads the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute-funded OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network, which is comprised of 17 different health system partners caring for over 17 M Floridians or approximately 60% of the population in the 3rd largest state in the US, along with 2 M Georgians and 1.1 M Alabamans. OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network, which is comprised of 17 different health system partners caring for over 17 M Floridians, or approximately 60% of the population in the 3rd largest state in the US, along with 2 M Georgians and 1.1 M Alabamans. The University of California-Irvine and the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences recently joined OneFlorida+. The patients receiving care in this network include vulnerable populations who are rarely or minimally included in traditional clinical trials (e.g., those of lower socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic minorities, children, and older adults). A hallmark of OneFlorida+ is its centralized Data Trust, which contains linked health care claims, electronic health record, tumor registry, vital statistics, and census data from its health system partners for cohort discovery, study feasibility determination, and to augment primary data collection activities. Dr. Shenkman facilitates investigators’ access to OneFlorida+ clinical settings and the Data Trust for a wide range of interventional trials and observational studies.  

Dr. Shenkman is also an MPI for the NIH Office of the Director-funded All of Us Precision Medicine cohort initiative in collaboration with the University of Miami, Emory University and Morehouse School of Medicine. In that capacity, she is responsible for overseeing community engagement and recruitment and retention efforts focused on rural and underserved populations in North Florida.   

Dr. Shenkman’s research is funded by PCORI, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, NIH, and the National Cancer Institute. Her work is published in such journals as Pediatrics, Health Services Research, Clinical Epidemiology, Pediatric Blood and Cancer, and the American Journal of Public Health. Dr. Shenkman is an elected member of the Society for Pediatric Research and the American Pediatric Society.

For questions, please contact Michael Proctor at michael.proctor@emory.edu.