Youran Lee is a president’s postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan School of Nursing whose research focuses on using artificial intelligence (AI) and health data to improve cancer care. As an oncology nurse, cancer survivor, and cancer researcher, she is driven by a simple question: how can we use data to better understand what patients experience during and after cancer treatment, and ensure that every patient receives equitable, personalized care?
Her research combines electronic health records, clinical notes, and community-level information such as neighborhood resources and social determinants of health to understand why some patients experience more severe symptoms and poorer outcomes than others. By applying large language models (LLMs), machine learning, and multimodal data science, she aims to identify patients at highest risk, uncover hidden patterns in symptom progression, and develop more personalized approaches to symptom management and cancer survivorship.
Through the MIDAS Postdoctoral Affiliates Program, Youran is expanding her expertise in AI, multimodal data integration, and scalable computational methods while collaborating with researchers across computer science, statistics, engineering, and medicine. She is particularly interested in developing AI methods that integrate structured clinical data, unstructured text, and longitudinal health information to better predict symptom trajectories and improve patient-centered outcomes.
Ultimately, Youran hopes to bridge nursing science and data science to create AI technologies that are not only technically innovative but also equitable, trustworthy, and grounded in patients’ real-world experiences. Her long-term goal is to lead an interdisciplinary research program that leverages AI to reduce disparities in cancer care and improve the lives of cancer survivors.