Dr. Gari Clifford's research featured in the Emory News Center
March 1, 2023
Profs. 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 reach tem 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"
February 21, 2023
We are delighted that the George B. Moody PhysioNet Challenges were warded 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. Moodydesigned 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.
Dr. Hyeokhyen Kwon has joined BMI as an Assistant Professor
January 2023
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 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”
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.
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.
Dr. Nasim Katebi featured in Emory News: Momentum builds for AI.Humanity initiative with faculty hires
November 28, 2022
Dr. Nasim Katebi was featured in Emory News in an article titled "Momentum builds for AI.Humanity initiative with faculty hires". In her research, Dr. Katebi develops AI, modeling, and engineering methods to quantify fetal-maternal physiology and improve healthcare outcomes in pregnancy and early childhood, with a focus on low-resource settings, bias, and health equity. She creates machine learning models to detect and predict cardiovascular complications in pregnancy, including hypertension, pre-eclampsia, and fetal growth restriction. Dr. Katebi also focuses on the biases in using AI and engineering in this context to enhance health equity in maternal health. To do this, she builds frameworks to identify individual, healthcare, and environmental factors that contribute to pregnancy-related complications. This includes delayed and fragmented care, social determinants of health, and race-related health disparities.
Dr. Abeed Sarker has been appointed to a Vice Chair for Research
November 2022
Congratulations to Dr. Abeed Sarker for his new role as a Vice Chair for Research. As the VC for research, a key role of his will be to mentor and guide incoming faculty to obtain their first grants. He will also help the Chair establish short- and long-term research objectives for the department, and help identify potential recruits and funding opportunities.
Shafa-at Ali Sheikhdefended his PhD dissertation on "Design and validity of automated Impedance Cardiogram (ICG) analysis algorithms for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) application and interpretation using artificial intelligence (AI) framework” under the supervision of Prof. Clifford. This work discovered ICG-based parameters indicating a combination of increased sympathetic activation and decreased cardiac contractility, which are markers of heart failure risk, in PTSD during trauma recall. This signal processing and AI-based framework can also be used for physiologic analyses for various cardiovascular diseases. After graduating from Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, he will return to Pakistan. Congrats, Dr. Sheikh!
BMI faculty Gari Clifford and Matthew Reyna help explain the gulf between AI and clinical practice in JAMA
July 2022
Profs. Clifford and Reyna, together with Prof. Nsoesie from Boston University, published an invited viewpoint in The Journal of the American Medical Association on "Rethinking Algorithm Performance Metrics for Artificial Intelligence in Diagnostic Medicine". The viewpoint focuses on how we often use the wrong optimization targets when applying machine learning to medical data, and how we can address this issue, and is part of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's broader series on Diagnostic Excellence.
Dr. Gari Clifford's talk: the use of interpretable machine learning in healthcare and its impact on bias and ethics
June 2022
Prof. Clifford was invited to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to discuss the use of interpretable machine learning in healthcare and its impact on bias and ethics at a symposium on Interpretable and Explainable AI and Machine Learning.
Dr. Gari Clifford is appointed as an external advisor to SleepHuB
May 2022
Dr. Gari Clifford is appointed as an external advisor to the University of Southern California Center for Sleep Health using Bioengineering (SleepHuB). SleepHuB is a unique network of clinicians, scientists and engineers who work collaboratively to conceptualize and operationalize translational projects related to sleep.
Seibi Kobara, PT, MPH and Min Huang are among the recipients of the David Cowan Scholarship 2022 from the Georgia Chapter of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (GA HIMSS). This scholarship is sponsored by leading firms of healthcare information technology, aiming at educating future leaders to advocate collaboration and improve the quality of medical services. Both Seibi and Min are collaborating with Assistant Professor Rishikesan Kamaleswaran to deepen our understanding of the complicated pathophysiology of sepsis and its complications to bring benefit to patients.
Dr. Abeed Sarker's research featured in WSJ: Social Media Offers a Trove of Information for Medical Researchers
April 2022
Dr. Sarker recently spoke to the Wall Street Journal about a recent paper entitled “Reddit discussions about buprenorphine associated precipitated withdrawal in the era of fentanyl” published in Clinical Toxicology. He discussed how natural language processing of social media data can inform clinicians about emerging concerns about treatment among people suffering from opioid use disorder.
Dr. Gari Clifford's research featured in the Emory Medicine Magazine
February 2022
Profs. Clifford (Emory BMI Chair) and Hall-Clifford were featured in the Emory Medicine Magazine in an article titled "Every Mother, Every Baby" for their work on Co-Design of mHealth and AI-enabled diagnostic systems with the lay midwives of highland Guatemala.
