Current News

September 2025

• Dr. Kwon received a pilot research award from Shriners Hospital from Children, titled “Markerless Gait Analysis for Cerebral Palsy Using Multi-view Videos”. In collaboration with Shriners’, Dr. Kwon’s team will develop smartphone-based AI system for accessible and scalable gait screening for children with Cerebral Palsy, which is a step toward supporting children living in low-resourced communities.

• Drs. Yashar Kiarashi, Gari Clifford, and Allan Levey received a grant of $500,000 for a research award titled "AI-Driven Sleep Study on Links Between Sleep and Neurodegeneration" from the Alzheimer's Association, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, and CurePSP.  In collaboration with Drs. James Lah, Amy Rodriguez, Donald Bliwise, and Lenora Higginbotham,  NextSense, in-ear EEG will be deployed for multi-night, at-home recordings in at-risk populations and to develop AI-driven analysis that identifies sleep-driven features associated with neurodegeneration biomarkers.

• Dr. Ismail received a follow-up research grant of $100,000 from Google with collaborators Dr. Jalota (Stanford University) and Myna Mahila Foundation for developing “An Evaluation Framework For LLM-Based Conversational Agents In Community Health.”
  Dr. Ismail received the Emory Healthcare Innovation Award with Selvi Ramalingam, Melissa Sousa, and Dr. Nabile Safdar for their proposal for “SPHERE: Systematic Process and Holistic Evaluation of LLM applications in healthcaRE”.

September 2025

Dr. Azra Ismail was appointed as a member of the WHO/Europe Technical Advisory Group on AI for Health (TAG-AI), and participated in the inaugural meeting in Porto, Portugal. Selected through a competitive process, the TAG-AI group's core functions will include providing expert advice to WHO/Europe on integrating ethical principles, governance, regulation and oversight into AI strategies. TAG-AI will also work to raise awareness, facilitate advocacy and help shape governance models that promote the benefits of AI in health, particularly in low-income settings and among underrepresented communities.

September 2025

Drs. Yashar Kiarashi, Gari Clifford, and Allan Levey received a grant of $500,000 for a research award titled "AI-Driven Sleep Study on Links Between Sleep and Neurodegeneration" from the Alzheimer's Association, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, and CurePSP.  In collaboration with Drs. James Lah, Amy Rodriguez, Donald Bliwise, and Lenora Higginbotham,  NextSense, in-ear EEG will be deployed for multi-night, at-home recordings in at-risk populations and to develop AI-driven analysis that identifies sleep-driven features associated with neurodegeneration biomarkers. 

September 2025

Drs. Clifford, Reyna and Sameni have just returned from presenting the prizes at the conference Computing in Cardiology in São Paulo, Brazil, for the George B. Moody PhysioNet Challenge 2025, on the topic of Detection of Chagas disease from the ECG. This international competition (now in its 26th year) posts a unique set of public data and then challenges research and industry from around the world to address an unsolved problem in biomedical data science. Typically over 100 teams compete for almost 9 months, generating thousands of entries to solve the problem.  The Challenges are one of three specific aims of the world-renowned PhysioNet Resource, which has been continuously funded by the NIH since its inception in 1999. Emory has run the Challenges under Dr. Clifford’s leadership for over a decade, and jointly with Dr. Reyna since he joined the department 5 years ago.

September 2025

Dr. Johann Vargas-Calixto,  a postdoctoral researcher working with Dr. Clifford, won the ‘Gary and Bill Sanders Best Poster Award’ at Computing in Cardiology in Brazil. His highly innovative poster entitled ‘Classification of the source of 1D Doppler ultrasound activity in fetal monitoring’ included a live demo using a bespoke app on a smartphone taped to the poster. Johann’s study aimed to develop an algorithm that automatically differentiates the sounds of fetal heart and umbilical cord pulses. Conference attendees who came to listen to the fetal Doppler signals could then try to guess their origin and see if their guesses were better than his automated AI approach. (Spoiler alert - they could not, by a long margin.) Results of this on-the-fly post-hoc experiment were then included in the final 4-page manuscript submitted in the conference proceedings.

September 2025

Zuzana Koščová, a research scientist working with Dr. Clifford, was a runner up in the Young Investigator Award at Computing in Cardiology in Brazil for her work  “Predicting Ventricular Arrhythmias using Upstream Electrograms from Intracardiac Devices,”. Ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) can lead to sudden cardiac death if not promptly managed. Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) typically deliver therapy after VA onset, leaving a limited window for intervention, and can lead to adverse effects such as inappropriate shocks. Her study investigates predicting VA onset using intracardiac electrograms (EGMs) up to 25 seconds before life-threatening VA. Her deep learning model achieved sensitivity of 96% and specificity of 98%. This approach could allow low-impact closed loop interventions (such as vagal stimulation) that could prevent VAs, and reduce the incidence of unpleasant and painful inappropriate shocks.

September 2025

On September 5th, the CSI PhD program hosted its annual Town Hall with the Director of Graduate Studies and admin team, giving incoming PhD students a chance to ask questions about the program and meet existing students. Our current CSI PhD Ambassadors were on hand to field everything BMI-related and help new students feel at home. Group photo attached, can you spot our department’s ambassadors.

Our department’s very own: Swati Rajwal (Sarker lab) and Kiersten Campbell (Reyna lab) have been accepted to the Laney Graduate School EDGE Ambassador program 2025-26. Together, they will collaborate with the Associate Dean & Assistant Directors of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement.

September 2025

Dr. Matt Reyna was recognized on Researcher Appreciation Day (September 12th)  by Dean Wong and the School of Medicine for the vital role he’s playing in advancing science, fueling discovery, driving innovation, and improving human health. Dr. Reyna was nominated by his peers for this award.

September 2025

Dr. Abeed Sarker was elected as a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI). ACMI is a college of elected fellows who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of biomedical informatics, have achieved national recognition in the field, and are committed to advancing the charitable, scientific, literary and educational purposes of ACMI are eligible for membership as a fellow. Each year, new fellows are elected by the voting members of ACMI. Fellows are elected for life and upon election are named Fellows of ACMI and may use the designation “FACMI”. The induction ceremony will be held at the AMIA Annual Symposium 2025. 

August 2025

• Dr. Abeed Sarker received renewal for his longstanding T32 predoctoral training program entitled Training in Advanced Data Analytics to End Drug-Related Harms (TADA) (MPIs: Sarker, Waller, Cooper) in collaboration with Rollins. The renewed program includes (eligible) predoctoral candidates from BMI. 

• Dr. Abeed Sarker is MPI, along with Dr. Wendy Book, on a newly funded R21 entitled “Natural language processing and machine learning for development of a Fontan Failure risk prediction model from electronic health records.” Further details can be found on the NIH Reporter page.

August 2025

JaMor Hairston, PhD student supervised by Dr. Sarker, received the Training in Advanced Data Analytics to End Drug-Related Harms (TADA) predoctoral fellowship. The fellowship will fund JaMor for three years and will focus on training in advanced data analytics targeted toward ending drug-related harms.

August 2025

Dr. Bamba Gaye, Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Emory University School of Medicine and Executive Director of the Alliance for Medical Research in Africa, AMedRA, received two special recognitions from the Ugandan Ministry of Health and Gulu University, presented by the Ugandan Commissioner for NCDs and the Vice-Chancellor of Gulu University.

These acknowledgments celebrate his excellence in science worldwide. They also honor his contributions to advancing the response to the NCD crisis in Africa through innovative solution, including the use of crowdsourcing to scale cardiac diagnostics with AI. Finally, they recognize his leadership in empowering African research teams and fellowsthrough AMedRA’s collaborative network across 33 countries.

During his stay in Gulu, Dr. Gaye visited the Cardiac Clinic at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital. He worked to establish new collaborations and to expand the CARDIOMIND AI Study, which integrates AI-ECG analysis with large language models (LLMs).

August 2025

Dr. Ali Bahrami Rad, who has been an assistant professor at BMI since 2022, is leaving to start a new position as a Research Associate Professor at the University of North Dakota. Dr. Rad’s research focuses on using machine learning and computational intelligence to analyze biomedical signals for clinical applications. He originally joined BMI in 2019 as a Visiting Assistant Professor before joining the faculty. 

Many congratulations on your new role and best wishes from all of us, Dr. Ali!

August 2025

Xavier Velez, a PhD student advised by professor Gari Clifford, was accepted as an Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation Scholar. His research focuses on developing signal processing and machine learning methods to improve the diagnosis and understanding of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Currently, he is adapting deep learning models originally trained for sleep staging to detect dementia, schizophrenia, and depression from EEG recordings during wakefulness. This work presents a novel method of leveraging foundation models for new clinical applications.

ARCS Foundation is 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides unrestricted financial awards to academically outstanding students in STEM. These three-year merit-based awards are largely funded by individual donors who seek to support the advancement of impactful science in America. ARCS Scholars gain access to a vibrant, supportive network of peers, mentors, and ARCS members, along with opportunities for collaboration and career growth.

June 2025

• Drs. Azra Ismail and Selen Bozkurt, along with Dr. Nadi Kaonga in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, received pilot funding from the Emory Medical Care Foundation (EMCF) for a project on menopause with Grady Hospital. 

June 2025

Mingzhe Hu was awarded a $3,000 SPIE scholarship. The scholarship is given to SPIE student members based on their potential contribution to optics and photonics, or a related discipline. The successful applicants were evaluated, selected, and approved by the SPIE Scholarship Committee.

Many Congratulations!

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

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 Excellent 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 health (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.