Current News

May 2025

• Dr. Hyeokhyen Kwon received Georgia CTSA Pilot Grants Awards, "ZEST-E: A therapeutic robotic exercise system for people with Parkinson's". He will work with robotics, neurologist, physical therapist to develop human-robot interaction systems for rehabilitation exercise for older people with Parkinson's Disease. 

May 2025

In celebration of Educator Appreciation Day, the Recognitions Committee at Emory School of Medicine sent out a call for nominations for educators who go above and beyond the call of duty as teachers and mentors.  Drs. Lucas McKay, Matt Reyna, Reza Sameni, and Abeed Sarker were identified as one of the exceptional educators with noteworthy passion and skills to educate, encourage, and support scholars and learners across the university.

May 2025

Dr. Gari Clifford was appointed as Dean’s Eminent Investigator, one of the highest honors that Emory University bestows upon a member of its faculty.  The distinction recognizes Dr. Clifford’s eminence as a scholar along with the accomplishments that place him at the very top of his field. The title also signifies that Dr. Clifford has made substantial contributions to Emory’s mission to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity.

A virtual event will celebrate Dr. Clifford's leadership and extraordinary research contributions. Please register for the event. 

May 2025

Dr. Rahul Islam from KwonLab received the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award for year 2025 from Department of Systems and Enterprise at Stevens for thesis titled “A Novel Scalable, Low-Burden, and Privacy-Preserving Affective Mobile Sensing System for Mental Health Monitoring in Real-World Settings”. His research has been featured multiple media, including Wired, Neuroscience News, Medical Xpress, Modern Optometry, News Medical and others.

May 2025

Dr. Gari Clifford and his lab's work on Alzheimer's Disease was featured on Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) in the award winning series "Your Fantastic Mind: Unlocking the Mind" Season 6, Episode 4.

This episode delves into brain health and aging, featuring stories on artificial intelligence (AI) used to detect Alzheimer's, lifestyle interventions to slow cognitive decline, how future doctors are being trained in dementia care and emerging research linking pollution and memory loss. 

May 2025

The BMI Awards were held on Thursday, May 1st. The department celebrated the award winners and end of semester successes. The department, also, welcomed Rachel Effron Sharma who was in attendance for the first annual Ashish Sharma Mentorship and Teaching Awards in memory of her late husband Dr. Ashish Sharma. Congratulations on your achievements!! 

• Samaneh Nasiri PhD, Yashar Kiarashi PhD, Roshini Deva, Yuting Guo, Xiaofan Mu, and Iris Zheng for Exellent Research Award
• Nasim Katebi PhD, Sepideh Nikookar PhD, and Kiersten Campbell for Ashish Sharma Mentorship and Teaching Award
• Matthew Reyna PhD for BMI Service Award
• Azra Ismail PhD for DEI Award
• Rayvant Sahni for Community Service Award
• Yao Ge for Dissertation Award

April 2025

• Dr. Selen Bozkurt has received pilot funding ($40,000) from Stanford Medicine’s Longevity and hEalthy Aging Research coNsortium (LEARN), National Institute on Aging (NIA) funded, to study how social needs are communicated by older patients and documented by clinicians.

• Dr. Saima Rathore received the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center’s Developmental Award from the NIA ($100K).  Dr. Rathore’s project focuses on proteomic biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease. This is a renewable award.

April 2025

The inaugural workshop on AI for Maternal and Child Health (AI4MCH) (see above) was hosted by Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University and held on the Emory campus on April 1st.  Dr. Ismail was instrumental in bringing this event to fruition; its goal was to bring together academics and practitioners globally from computing and AI, public and global health, medicine, social sciences, policy, and more.  Lauhitya Reddy, a research specialist in Dr. Kwon’s lab, was one of the participants.

April 2025

Dr. Lucas McKay’s research on Parkinson’s disease was featured in the Emory News Center in an article titled “Emory and Georgia Tech Pioneer AI-Driven Research on Parkinson’s Freezing of Gait,” as well as in a promotional YouTube video produced by the Emory Health Sciences Media Office. This work is being conducted in close collaboration with Dr. Kwon.

April 2025

Drs. Kwon and McKay organized a symposium for “Artificial Intelligence and Computational Modeling for Diagnosis and Treatment of Functional Mobility Deficits”. at the Annual Meeting of American Society of Neurorehabilitation (ASNR). Dr. Kwon gave a talk about “Privacy-preserving low-cost computer-vision approaches for early prediction of cognitive and mobility decline”. 

March 2025

• Drs. Azra Ismail and Nasim Katebi received a $50,000 pilot grant from the Women of Emory Impact Circle to support the establishment of the Center for AI in Reproductive Equity (CAIRE).

• Dr. Selen Bozkurt received a 1-year extension on her VA IPA on which she collaborates with Drs. Karl Lorenz and Karleen Giannitrapani.  She works with them on several research and operations projects including Dr. Lorenz’s Geriatrics & Extended Care (GEC) funded Quality Improvement Resource Center (QuIRC). She also leads programming for analyses related to an evaluation of the National Center for Ethic’s Life Sustaining Treatment Initiative and supports an analysis of surgical and palliative outcomes as well as other analyses, including to support VA operations, research, and for quality improvement.

March 31 2025

At the end of March, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) inducted Dr. Gari Clifford into its College of Fellows.  AIMBE Fellows are among the most distinguished medical and biological engineers including four Nobel Prize laureates and 27 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Science and/or Technology and Innovation.  Fellows are nominated and evaluated by their peers prior to election so this honor is of special significance to Dr. Clifford. At the ceremony in Washington, DC, he said, “It's a privilege to be selected by my peers for this honor, and I hope to be able to use this opportunity to advocate for the health of the underserved and make some 'good trouble'.”

Many Congratulations on your achievement! 

March 2025

Dharini Raghavan from Dr. Kwon’s lab won three awards from the MIT Hacking Medicine: 1) main MIT hack, 2) a special challenge by Google Health, and 3) a special prize from Niraj Bhatia Foundation from Harvard Medical School. BIG BIG Congratulations on this achievement! We are very proud of you!!

March 2025

Congratulations to Dr. Matthew Reyna on receiving the annual Dragon Award for Research Excellence and Collaboration, presented by the Office of Research on March 26th.  This award recognized Dr. Reyna for his dedication and outstanding contributions by exemplifying excellence in leadership, service, and performance in alignment with Emory’s Mission and the One Emory Strategic Framework. The Research Excellence and Collaboration Award specifically honors faculty investigators who consistently demonstrate exceptional partnership with the Office of Research Administration.

February 2025

Congratulations to all BMI members on your achievements! Funding secured includes:

• Drs. Reza Sameni, Abeed Sarker, Matthew Reyna, and Gari Clifford received funding as a part of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation award to Dr. Cynthia Whiteney in SPH: Global Health. The BMI team will be de-identifying and transforming CHAMPS data into an AI-ML ready format.

• Dr. Tony Pan received additional funding from GA Tech Research Institute for the AI/BioM FITBIT project. Dr. Pan and his team will develop a data management solution for managing experimental parameters, sensor outputs, data analysis results, and other relevant data for real-time and retrospective analysis and model development, archival, and provenance tracking.

• Dr. Selen Bozkurt received a 2-year pilot grant from DOM: Palliative Medicine as a part of their Fraser-Parker Foundation award. Additionally, she received a Sanofi Innovations in Data Exploration & Analytics Award (“iDEA-iTECH Awards”) from Sanofi US Services Inc. The title of her project is “AI-Driven Approaches to Enhance Diversity in Clinical Trial Enrollment Using Real-World Data (RWD)”. This project seeks to develop an AI-driven framework to identify enrollment disparities and systemic barriers using advanced machine learning techniques, including Large Language Models (LLMs), by analyzing structured and unstructured data from electronic health records (EHRs) including clinical notes, and patient portal messages. 

February 2025

Dharini Raghavan, GT ECE MS student, from Dr. Kwon’s lab is selected for the final round of MIT Hacking Medicineunder the Assistive Technology track, which was about Ubiquitous Computing and Behavior Sensing for Older Adults. Congratulations!

February 2025

Xiaofan Mu, Emory CS MS student, from Dr. Kwon’s lab was selected to participate in the final round of 2025 Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition and Master’s Showcase at Emory University. Nearly 40 students participated this year from Emory, so the competition was fierce!

January 2025

Researchers at the Department of Biomedical Informatics and the Department of Computer Science at Emory University have developed an advanced AI model that accurately predicts blood transfusion needs in non-traumatic ICU patients. Published in Health Data Science, the study addresses the limitations of existing clinical decision support systems, which often focus on specific patient subgroups. By analyzing a comprehensive set of clinical features, including lab results and vital signs, the AI model can predict transfusion requirements within a 24-hour window, aiding timely decision-making in high-pressure ICU environments.

The research team, led by Alireza Rafiei and Rishikesan Kamaleswaran, trained the model on over 72,000 ICU patient records using machine learning and a meta-model ensemble approach. The AI system demonstrated high performance with an AUROC of 0.97, an accuracy of 0.93, and an F1 score of 0.89. In addition to predicting transfusion needs, it identified key biomarkers influencing decisions, improving both patient outcomes and resource allocation. The team plans to integrate the model into clinical workflows, optimizing transfusion strategies and enhancing critical care medicine through data-driven technologies.

January 2025

Congratulations to all BMI members on your achievements! Funding secured includes:

• Dr. Nasim Katebi received a CHARTER (Research Innovation Support and Enhancement (RISE) Pilot award for the project titled “Investigating the Epigenetic Links Between Socioeconomic Status, Prenatal Stress, and Fetal Developmental Features”. 

January 22nd 2025

OpenBMI, the BMI outreach team, hosted a virtual panel discussion on careers in biomedical informatics. Featured distinguished speakers from industry, government, and academia shared their career journeys, insights, and the challenges they have faced in the field. The panelists included Dr. Ayse Selin Çakmak, an Applied Sensing & Health Scientist at Apple, Dr. Caroline Esnault, a Staff Scientist at the NICHD Bioinformatics and Scientific Programming Core at the NIH, and Dr. Manoj Bhasin, a Professor at Emory University School of Medicine and Director of the Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology Single Cell Biology Program at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. Participants had the opportunity to learn about different career paths, emerging trends in biomedical informatics, and engage the panelists with questions.