Latest Updates
Dr. Anant Madabhushi leads the Emory Empathetic AI for Health Institute
November 7, 2023
The Emory Empathetic AI for Health Institute, under the AI.Humanity program, led by Dr. Anant Madabhushi, aims to harness the potential of AI and big data to improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of various diseases. It brings together experts such as Drs. Gari Clifford, Judy Gichoya, and Marly van Assen, focusing on AI advancements for diverse patient groups. Emory AI.Health seeks to develop accessible and equitable AI tools and collaborate with various institutions to extend its impact globally.
Dr. Azra Ismail received Google Award for Inclusion Research
October 2023
Dr. Azra Ismail received a Google Award for Inclusion Research. This award will support the design and evaluation of a culturally-sensitive LLM-based chatbot for health information delivery, in the context of maternal and child care in India. It will uncover the potential for harm, as well as develop methods for addressing gaps.
BMI faculty members are recognized for their awards and achievements
October 2023
Emory School of Medicine awards BMI faculty members for their accomplishments and excellence in research and education. Congratulations to Profs. Rishi Kamaleswaran, Matt Reyna, and Abeed Sarker for the Regional, National, and International Awards, Prof. J. Lucas McKay for Hidden Gems and Profs. Babak Mahmoudi and Abeed Sarker for Senior Promotions.
Dr. Azra Ismail receives award for a paper at CSCW 2023
October 2023
Dr. Azra Ismail received an Honorable Mention Award at the CSCW 2023 conference. The paper presents an ethnographic study of a large-scale real-world integration of an AI system for resource allocation in a call-based maternal and child health program in India. The findings uncover complexities around determining who benefits from the intervention and how the human-AI collaboration is managed.
Dr. Hyeokhyen Kwon made achievements at Ubicomp/ISWC 2023
October 2023
Dr. Hyeokhyen Kwon and his student, Zikang Leng, a junior Georgia Tech computer science major, received Honorable Mention award and recognized as Best Paper finalist in Ubicomp/ISWC 2023.
Their recent research showcases the transformative potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in enhancing the utility of wearable devices for real-world human activity recognition. They introduced an innovative cross-modal approach that employs ChatGTP and a human motion generative model to efficiently acquire large-scale datasets for wearables. This has led to a substantial improvement in the performance of systems designed for wearable-based human activity recognition.
Check out their work and Stay tuned for how these state-of-the-art AI techniques will innovate sensing behaviors in neurodivergent populations in the coming years as well.
Drs. Hyeokhyen Kwon and Gari Clifford received an NIH R21 Award
October 2023
Drs. Hyeokhyen Kwon and Gari Clifford received an NIH R21 Award from National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, titled “Artificial Intelligence Applied to Video and Speech for Objectively Evaluating Social Interaction and Depression in Mild Cognitive Impairment”.
Detecting early signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which normally precedes Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), is important for preventing further cognitive decline as individuals with MCI can still function independently. With the progression of cognitive impairment, MCI individuals experience subtle yet important decreases in social engagement with more feelings of depression and loneliness. The goal of this proposal is to validate an artificial intelligence system that can automatically monitor and quantify real-world social interaction and mental health behaviors for a MCI population, which is an important step toward evidence-based therapies for managing cognitive impairment.
Dr. Gari Clifford's safe+natal program receives a $1.8 million grant from Google.org
Dr. Gari Clifford and Dr. Rachel Hall-Clifford, who co-founded and have led the safe+natal program for the last 10 years, have received a $1.8 million grant from Google.org, together with the Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu' Kawoq, to use AI to improve maternal-child health in rural Guatemala. The safe+natal program equips Indigenous midwives with affordable monitoring technology, including smartphones, blood pressure cuffs, and ultrasound devices. This empowers midwives to monitor pregnancies, detect potential issues early, and connect expectant mothers with necessary follow-up care.
The Google.org grant will expand the program's reach, placing AI tools in the hands of Indigenous Mayan midwives, potentially saving lives at a significant scale. Together with BMI faculty Dr. Nasim Katebi (who developed many of the AI algorithms as part of her PhD thesis) and Dr. Reza Sameni, the team will continue to develop and translate a series of AI-driven innovations into the hands of midwives in remote regions.
This collaboration is part of Google.org's $25 million philanthropic challenge, supporting projects that harness AI to advance progress towards the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Importantly, all 15 selected projects, including safe+natal, will be open-sourced to encourage further development and collaboration. Dr. Gari Clifford and his team emphasize the significance of community-led technology solutions, marking a substantial step forward in addressing maternal-child health disparities and preventing avoidable deaths in rural Guatemala.
Dr. Nasim Katebi has received a K career development award.
August 1, 2023
Dr. Nasim Katebi has received a K career development award from the Pediatric and Reproductive Environmental Health program. This grant will support her research on health disparities in maternal care, with a specific emphasis on environmental influences, social inequalities, and maternal stress. Dr. Katebi's research aims to study the connections between these factors and epigenetic modifications within the mother-infant dyad. Her research goal is developing comprehensive and holistic healthcare strategies that effectively address the challenges faced by diverse communities.
Many congratulations to Dr. Katebi on K career development award!
Dr. Rishi Kamaleswaran's publication has been named American College of Clinical Pharmacy's 2023 Critical Care paper of the year.
A team of multi-institutional investigators, including Dr. Rishi Kamaleswaran and Emory University PhD student Alireza Rafiei were recognized by the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) for their recently published paper titled “Pharmacophenotype identification of intensive care unit medications using unsupervised cluster analysis of the ICURx common data model” which was named the 2023 Critical Care paper of the year.
The ACCP is a key pharmacy organization that focuses on how pharmacists improve patient outcomes through improving the medication use process. Within ACCP, there are different Practice and Research Networks (PRNs) that represent the various disciplines, including critical care. Every year, the Critical Care PRN reviews publications by its members and goes through a grading process by the awards committee looking primarily for 'substantial contribution to the literature.' The objective of the study was to identify novel patterns of medication clusters (i.e., pharmacophenotypes) correlated with ICU adverse effects and patient-centered outcomes. Dr. Sikora and her team found that patterns among patient clusters and medication regimens may be observed using empiric methods of unsupervised machine learning in combination with a common data model. The findings have the possibility of improving patient outcomes through applying knowledge of the patterns at the bedside that can result in guidance on medication-related decision making.
Dr. Azra Ismail has been appointed as an Assistant Professor at BMI
July 26, 2023
BMI is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Azra Ismail as a new assistant professor.
Dr. Ismail's research focuses on the design of data/AI-driven systems that target health equity. Her work grapples with issues of equity and social justice at various stages, from data collection and cleaning, to model development, to human-AI interaction. Her dissertation focused on the design of machine learning-based resource allocation and decision support, conversational agents, and computer vision-based screening in real-world maternal and child health settings in India. Her work aims to inform a future where AI systems address health inequities for communities on the margins, reduce the burden on health workers, and enable human-AI collaboration.
Dr. Ismail has a Ph.D. in human-centered computing and an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Georgia Tech. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she undertakes ethnographic fieldwork, participatory design, system development, and evaluation. Her work has led her to engage with diverse stakeholders including frontline health workers and nonprofits like ARMMAN and SWACH. She has also worked with Google’s AI for Social Good Team, the Wadhwani Institute for AI, UN Global Pulse, and Philips Research North America. Apart from her research endeavours, Azra is the co-founder of MakerGhat, an education nonprofit in India that nurtures leadership and community among underserved youth through hands-on making.
Dr. Hyeokhyen Kwon and Dr. J Lucas McKay's work was featured in Oracle for Research
July 19, 2023
Dr. HyeokHyen Kwon and Dr. J Lucas McKay's work was featured in Oracle for Research in an article titled "Emory University uses Oracle Cloud to monitor disorders like Parkinson's".
Their research team is using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to develop wearable devices that monitor motion disorder behaviors in daily life. The team aims to create a neural network that recognizes abnormal movements from large datasets, estimating FoG severity and overall movement disorder symptoms. The use of OCI accelerates their research progress, and the neural network's results closely match expert ratings. They plan to release their dataset and trained models to benefit the research community and advance Parkinson's disease analysis.
Dr. Samaneh Nasiri has been appointed as an Assistant Professor at BMI
July 17, 2023
BMI is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Samaneh Nasiri as a new assistant professor.
The main focus of her research is working on improving generalization for health and wellness applications using signal processing and machine learning techniques. Currently, she is leading the CAISR project (Complete AI Sleep Report), where the aim is to develop a complete AI sleep algorithm that generalizes across age, gender, and ethnicity, and then extend this work to provide sleep-based biomarkers of brain and heart health and mortality. The long-term goal of CAISR is to increase the value of sleep data by replacing manual analysis with validated open-source data-driven AI approaches.
Dr. Samaneh has a great deal of research experience in machine learning, signal processing, and optimization. The main focus of her research is to bring together AI, mathematics, computation, and medical knowledge to study and develop new solutions to a wide variety of real-world medical problems, such as sleep analysis and predicting neurological and cardiovascular diseases. More specifically, theoretical signal processing and machine learning, unsupervised deep learning, and self/semi-supervised transfer learning are some of the research topics she works on.
Dr. Babak Mahmoudi has been promoted to Associate Professor
July 12, 2023
BMI is delighted to announce that Dr. Babak Mahmoudi has been promoted to Associate Professor in BMI, effective September 1.
Dr. Mahmoudi’s research is focused on design and implementation of autonomous and interactive learning intelligent systems for personalized therapies, biomarker discoveries and developing next-generation intelligent neural interface and neuromodulation technologies to restore function after disease or injuries. He has applied this technology to a broad range of applications in neurological and psychiatric disorders including, epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease, depression, memory disorders, cardiovascular diseases and gastrointestinal disorders.
Another research thrust in Dr Mahmoudi’s lab is developing open-source software platforms to make advanced AI tools and technologies accessible to biomedical research community. These platforms are aimed to serve as a catalyst to connect research communities and facilitate broad collaboration amongst clinicians, scientists, and engineers. Also, as the Vice Chair for Outreach, he leads the efforts to engage with broader communities.
His research has been supported by awards from various funding agencies and initiatives including the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes (NINDS), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the NIH Common Fund’s Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) program, Georgia Research Alliance, Emory Udall Center, Emory Neuromodulation and Technology Innovation Center, and Emory Woodruff Health Sciences Center.
Dr. Nasim Katebi has been appointed as an Assistant Professor at BMI
May 2023
BMI is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Nasim Katebi as a new assistant professor.
Dr. Katebi's research focuses on the design of AI models and engineering techniques to quantify fetal-maternal physiology. The aim of her research is improving health monitoring during pregnancy and postpartum, with a special focus on underrepresented communities. By using edge computing and machine learning, she is building models for early detection and prediction of cardiovascular complications in pregnancy.
Prof. Gari Clifford's work was featured in Health Science Update
May 22, 2023
Dr. Gari Clifford's project, the Safe+Natal program, a maternal health initiative in Guatemala that has showcased significant success in enhancing pregnancy outcomes in Maya communities, has been featured in the Emory Health Science Update. The project is among the top five finalists under consideration for a $9 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation’s Lever for Change Maternal & Infant Health Award.
Dr. Hari Trivedi advocates for inclusive datasets to address health disparities with AI.
May 15, 2023
Dr. Hari Trivedi emphasizes the importance of inclusive datasets in the article titled "Will AI Perpetuate or Eliminate Health Disparities?" published by WebMD. He highlights the significance of incorporating demographic information into medical imaging datasets used to train AI algorithms.
Vote for Reza Sameni in the ARPA-H Dash Online Competition
April 21, 2023
Dr. Reza Sameni is participating in ARPA-H Dash, a March Madness-style bracket competition that features innovative ideas in head-to-head competition. Dr. Reza Sameni submitted his idea - Passive-Brain-Audition: Develop an in-ear AI technology that can lead to earlier detection of brain diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer's.
Voting instructions:
- Click on this link: https://start.polyplexus.com/
- Click SIGN In and request a new account. (This is very short and takes less than a minute.)
- Once signed in under your account, click on the “Round 1 Voting” on the upper right hand.
- Once you see the BRACKET, click on the pink VOTE button in the middle.
- Click SKIP until you see his submission. (Under Proactive Health / Title: Passive-Brain-Audition)
- Click SELECT (on the left) and click VOTE (at the bottom).
Dr. Anant Madabhushi interviewed by TVO on how AI might Revolutionize Medicine
April 13, 2023
Dr. Anant Madabhushi had an interview with TVO Today, answering "How Will AI Revolutionize Medicine?". AI has made significant advancements for primary diagnosis. The utilization of AI to customize treatment plans and management strategies for patients is the upcoming frontier in healthcare, said Dr. Anant Madabhushi. The full interview is available at The Agenda with Steve Paikin - "How Will AI Revolutionize Medicine?".
BMI organized an outreach event - "Does AI Recognize Me?"
March 18, 2023
BMI organized an outreach event on March 18, 2023, titled "Does AI Recognize Me?". The two-hour workshop was held as part of the Atlanta Science Festival (ASF). The event elucidated the finer nuances of Artificial Intelligence (AI), emphasizing the underlying biases and the subsequent implications that pervade today’s AI landscape. ASF, a yearly spectacle of science education and STEM career discovery, showcased an impressive array of over 150 educative events this year, stretching across various locales in the Atlanta region.
This outreach event was led collaboratively by students from both Emory and Georgia Tech, each of whom focused on different aspects of AI technology. Vidhi Talera (GT) explored the potential of video AI, Deeksha Manjunath (GT) discussed the biases in speech recognition algorithms, Chase Fensore utilized Teachable Machine to illustrate representation bias in AI classification tasks, Jeanne Powell demonstrated potential biases in image recognition, Elizabeth Nemeti delved into biases in AI-generated art and text, and Somayyeh Mousavi focused on synthetic data generation and its biases. The event was organized by Dr. Hyeok Kwon and Dr. Babak Mahmoudi, the BMI vice-chair of Outreach and Engagement.
The outreach event attracted an enthusiastic medley of parents and school children, who engaged actively with the presenters. The outreach event at the ASF served as a valuable platform for the Emory BMI department to enhance public understanding of AI technologies and their societal implications. The success of this event, coupled with the prepared resource package for future outreach, has set a positive trajectory for Emory BMI’s future engagements.
Dr. Gari Clifford's research featured in the Emory News Center
March 1, 2023
Prof. Clifford and his research team were featured in Emory News Center in an article titled "New study shows how machine learning can improve care for people with Rett syndrome" for their work published in PLOS One. Profs. Clifford and his research team used the MC10 Biostamp patch to analyze the movement and cardiac activity of people living with Rett syndrome and found three specific patterns in the movement and heart rate that allowed them to accurately differentiate high-from low-symptom-severity individuals.
The George B. Moody PhysioNet Challenges were awarded the "Distinguished Achievement Award for Data Reuse"
We are delighted that the George B. Moody PhysioNet Challenges were awarded the "Distinguished Achievement Award for Data Reuse", as a part of the DataWorks! Prize. The DataWorks! Prize, launched on May 11, 2022, is a partnership between the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) to highlight the role of data sharing and reuse in scientific discovery while recognizing and rewarding researchers who engage in these practices.
George B. Moody designed and led the Challenges from 2000 to 2015, when ill health prevented him continuing. Prof. Clifford has led the PhysioNet Challenges since 2015 and has been a key contributor to its parent resource, PhysioNet (The Research Resource for Complex Physiologic Signals), for over two decades. Prof. Reyna has co-led the PhysioNet Challenges since 2019, and has been instrumental in the development of its repeatable science standards. The team plans to use the $50,000 prize to enhance accessibility for the data in the Challenges.
Each year, the PhysioNet Challenges post novel datasets, and facilitates the development and distribution of open-source code to solve an outstanding problem in health data science, with a specific emphasis on temporal data. The Challenges are designed to maximize scientific repeatability and usability with a carefully designed data science framework. The products of the Challenges are cited thousands of times, and have supported an array of patents and a new generation of medical products. Emphasizing computational efficiency, data and algorithmic equity, and clinical applicability, Clifford and Reyna have innovated methods for sharing and reusing data, and evaluating state-of-the-art approaches to AI in medicine, as reflected in a recently invited JAMA editorial.
The official announcement on the DataWorks! Prize can be found here and more about the PhysioNet Challenges can be found here.
2023 George B. Moody PhysioNet Challenge Announcement
February 2023
We are excited to announce the 2023 George B. Moody PhysioNet Challenge. This year's challenge is on predicting neurological recovery from coma after cardiac arrest using EEG.
The first deadline is April 8th 2023. More rules, links to code and data, and background can be found at the 2023 George B. Moody PhysioNet Challenge page.
Dr. Hyeokhyen Kwon has joined BMI as an Assistant Professor
January 2023
Dr. Hyeokhyen Kwon, or Hyeok, joins Emory BMI as a new Assistant Professor in April 2023. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 2022. His research focuses on designing efficient, secure, and privacy-preserving machine learning systems on the network edge using distributed on- and off-body sensors to tackle brain health challenges. His applications lie at the intersection of computer vision, speech analytics, ubiquitous computing, and human activity recognition. He has published in top-tiered CS journals and conferences, such as, CVPR, ICCV, Ubicomp/ISWC, IMWUT, and Sensors. His Ph.D. research received Samsung Ph.D. Fellowship and an Oracle for Research Award, and he was named a finalist in the Gaetano Borriello Outstanding Student Award at Ubicomp/ISWC 2021, as well as a finalist in Oracle for Research Fellow. During his PostDoc at Emory BMI, he also received the Oracle for Research Award.
Dr. Selen Bozkurt has joined BMI as an Assistant Professor
January 2023
The Department of Biomedical Informatics is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Selen Bozkurt as a new assistant professor. Dr. Bozkurt is an experienced biomedical informatician and biostatistician. Her primary research focus is using data science and artificial intelligence to analyze real-world health data to support clinical evidence generation, decision making and resource allocation. Additionally, she is committed to developing AI-based systems that are interpretable, fair, and widely applicable in healthcare, as well as implementing best practices for their governance and surveillance. Prior to joining Emory BMI, Dr. Bozkurt was a Senior Data Scientist at Stanford University and VA Palo Alto.
Prof. Gari Clifford spoke at 'Simuvaction' on “AI and Health Disparities on a Global Stage”
January 20, 2023
"The best kind of challenging" - Three Emory students join an international simulation to debate AI and health inequities. BMI professor Gari Clifford spoke at the event.
Dr. Abeed Sarker has been promoted to Associate Professor
January 1, 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Abeed Sarker on his promotion to Associate Professor. Funded primarily by the NIH and CDC, Dr. Sarker has been leading research at the intersection of NLP and health. His research on social media mining for substance use research has had a transformational impact. His research has also been featured on national and international media, including the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. Recently, he was also appointed as the Vice Chair for Research by the Dean of the School of Medicine.
Dr. Gari Clifford elected as an IEEE Fellow
January 1, 2023
Dr. Gari Clifford has been elected as an IEEE Fellow as of Jan. 1st 2023 for contributions to machine-learning applications in cardiovascular time series.
The IEEE, or Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is the world's leading (and largest) association of technical professionals with more than 423,000 members in over 160 countries around the world. Its objectives are the educational and technical advancement of electrical and electronic engineering, telecommunications, computer engineering and similar disciplines. The IEEE Grade of Fellow is the highest level of membership, conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number of fellows selected in any one year does not exceed one-tenth of one percent of the total voting Institute membership.