Past Outreach Activities

OpenBMI participated in the 2025 Atlanta Science Festival this Saturday March 22nd: a full day of engaging science activities to connect with the local Atlanta community at Piedmont Park. At their booth, “O2 Detectives: Find the O2 in You!“, graduate and undergraduate volunteers in OpenBMI demonstrated how blood oxygen saturation (SpO₂) monitoring works with pulse oximeters. 100+ kids and families learned about potential biases in SpO₂ measurements for darker skin tones or dark nail polish, as highlighted by recent studies following the COVID-19 pandemic by colleagues at Emory, Duke, MSK, and others (Hao et al., 2024; Charpignon et al., 2023; Sjoding et al., 2020). Visitors also explored how pulse oximetry works through a Raspberry Pi pulse oximeter demo developed by OpenBMI, allowing them to better understand how commercial pulse oximeter measurements are calculated by looking under the hood of the Raspberry Pi model. More information and source code for Raspberry Pi pulse oximeter demo can be found here: https://github.com/fensorechase/pulseox_dataviz. 

Thank you to the OpenBMI team for sharing insights from the world of Biomedical Informatics with the next generation: Chase Fensore, Kiersten Campbell, Sean Jordan, Josephine Buclez, Athena Tian, Shoibolina Kaushik, Elizabeth Nemeti, and OpenBMI advisor Prof. Babak Mahmoudi.

If you would like to spearhead another great OpenBMI demo for ASF 2026, please email enemeti@emory.edu.

January 22nd 2025

On Wednesday, January 22nd, from noon to 1 PM, OpenBMI 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. 

November 16th 2023

Elizabeth Nemeti, an Atlanta International School (AIS) alumni, spoke at the AIS STEAM Lunch & Learn on November 16th. This program is designed to give middle and high school students the chance to learn about various STEAM fields and gain insight into future career options. The presentations are informal where our students can learn from guest speakers about what they do and about their education and career paths. Elizabeth discussed the day-to-day experience of continuing her education as a PhD student after her undergraduate, as well as her research explorations in the NISyS lab in the Biomedical Informatics department. 

May 2023

OpenBMI participated in "Fernbank after Dark" on May 12th. This series at the Fernbank Natural History Museum offers evening experiences that combine science, art, and mixology, targeting Atlanta's young adult demographic. Collaborating with Emory's Association for Women in Science, led by Jeanne Powell, BMI's Parisa Sarikhani, Nasim Katebi, and Elizabeth Nemeti showcased medical instruments and an app from the Clifford lab. This app, designed for non-English speaking pregnant women in Guatemala, uses images instead of text to communicate symptoms, facilitating medical information collection without written input. Visitors could try the app, gaining insight into its real-world impact. The event underscored women's scientific achievements and the BMI department's dedication to global healthcare equality, reflecting Fernbank's "Around the World" theme. OpenBMI and AWIS anticipate future events to celebrate women in STEM.

March 2023

The Biomedical Informatics (BMI) Department of Emory University hosted an event titled "Does AI Recognize Me?" on March 18, 2023, as part of the Atlanta Science Festival (ASF). The two-hour session, held in Emory's Psychology Building, aimed to shed light on the biases inherent in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and their broader implications.

The ASF, an annual celebration of science and STEM career exploration, featured over 150 educational events across Atlanta. Science ATL, in collaboration with Emory University, Georgia Tech, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, and other sponsors, facilitated the festival to promote science learning and reflect Atlanta's diverse population. The event attracted families and elementary school children, who actively participated in hands-on demonstrations and discussions.

Emory and Georgia Tech students collaborated on this outreach event, each addressing different AI technologies. Vidhi Talera presented video AI's potential using Mediapipe, while Deeksha Manjunath highlighted biases in speech recognition. Chase Fensore and Jeanne Powell used Teachable Machine and Snapchat's LensStudio, respectively, to demonstrate AI classification biases. Elizabeth Nemeti employed ChatGPT and DALLE to discuss AI-generated art and text biases, and Somayyeh Mousavi concentrated on the biases in synthetic data generation. Dr. Babak Mahmoudi supervised the event, with Dr. Hyeok Kwon's management.

The presentations not only showcased AI technology but also examined ethical concerns, such as discriminatory and accessibility biases, reflecting the BMI department's research focus on equitable AI.