Sep 20
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Liu Liu

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My primary career interest is making new discoveries through creative thinking and innovative investigations. My long term research interests in the molecular mechanisms of heart regeneration to effectively prolong and improve the lives of heart patients, particularly in the development of a comprehensive understanding of post-translational/epigenetics regulation for cardiac reprogramming based heart therapy. I am developing a novel concept for a post-translational modification (PTM) code that is applicable across different proteins. I am utilizing computational methods to gain insights into the functional implications of PTMs that transcend protein boundaries.

Sep 20
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Rebecca Lindsey

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Research in the Lindsey Lab focuses on using simulation to enable on-demand design, discovery, and synthesis of bespoke materials.

These efforts are made possible by Dr. Lindsey’s ChIMES framework, which comprises a unique physics-informed machine-learned (ML) interatomic potential (IAP) and artificial intelligence-automated development tool that enables “quantum accurate” simulation of complex systems on scales overlapping with experiment, with atomistic resolution. Using this tool, her group elucidates fundamental materials behavior and properties that can be manipulated through advanced material synthesis and modification techniques. At the same time, her group develops new approaches to overcome grand challenges in machine learning for physical sciences and engineering, including: training set generation, model uncertainty quantification, reproducibility and automation, robustness, and accessibility to the broader scientific community. Her also group seeks to understand what the models themselves can teach us about fundamental physics and chemistry.

Artists interpretation of a new laser-driven shockwave approach for nanocarbon synthesis predicted by ChIMES simulations and later validated experimentally.

Sep 19
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John Prensner

John Prensner

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My research group uses molecular techniques and computational methods to dissect the biology of pediatric cancers. We are invested in fundamental genomic discovery of non-canonical open reading frames that are dysregulated in cancer. We use functional genomics techniques to facilitate biological analysis. We employ data science methodologies to model and predict the molecular biology of cancers. Our particular focus is on RNA translation and its regulation. We also focus on therapeutic interventions that may represent novel treatment strategies for cancer.

What are some of your most interesting projects?

I am fascinated by the ways in which cancer cells pattern RNA translation. We are currently performing large-scale -omic analyses to identify patterns in RNA translational control across pediatric brain cancers.

How did you end up where you are today?

I came to science late in life. I studied English Literature as an undergraduate at Tufts University before deciding to study biochemistry as a senior in college. This led me to join a cancer biology lab after college, which motivated me to go to medical school. I enrolled in the University of Michigan Medical School in 2006 but quickly became interested in the biology of cancer. I then joined the Medical Scientist Training Program and graduated with an MD/PhD dual degree in 2014. I pursued Pediatrics clinical training at Boston Children’s Hospital and pediatric hematology/oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I then completed post-doctoral research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard prior to joining the faculty of the University of Michigan.

What is the most significant scientific contribution you would like to make?

My goal is to cure childhood brain cancers. That is what motivates me every day!

Sep 14
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Mohammed Ombadi

Mohammed Ombadi

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My research focuses on understanding and quantifying climate change impacts on hydroclimatic extremes. From heavy storms and floods to extreme heatwaves and droughts, I study the changing characteristics of these events and their impacts on our daily lives. I use a wide range of data-driven methods such as causal inference, information theory, nonlinear dynamics and machine learning in the analysis of environmental systems. I am primarily interested in using causal inference to obtain new mechanistic insights on the impact of global warming on extreme weather events. My recent work has explored global warming impact on extreme events such as rainfall extremes, using a combination of observations and model simulations. Additionally, recent work has focused on developing new techniques to measure resilience of environmental systems to extreme events, with the ultimate goal of informing mitigation and adaptation strategies to climate change.Map of the Northern Hemisphere showing the projected increase in extreme daily rainfall by 2100 relative to 1950–1979 (the risk ratio). Darker areas are predicted to be more prone to increased rainfall extremes with global warming.

Map of the Northern Hemisphere showing the projected increase in extreme daily rainfall by 2100 relative to 1950–1979 (the risk ratio). Darker areas are predicted to be more prone to increased rainfall extremes with global warming.

What are some of your most interesting projects?

Resilience of Watersheds to Extreme Weather and Climate Events:

Hydrologic watersheds are the fundamental units of the land surface used in the analysis and management of water resources systems. The response of watersheds to extreme events is highly complex and determined by a multitude of factors, including the presence of dams and reservoirs, snowpack, groundwater-surface water interaction, and vegetation cover, among others. One significant knowledge gap in this field of research is how to objectively and unambiguously quantify the resilience and resistance of watersheds to extreme events, such as droughts and floods. Developing metrics to quantify resilience is of utmost importance, particularly in light of the changing characteristics of extreme events due to global warming.

In this project, I employ a wide range of statistical methods to quantify resilience. I then apply methods of machine learning, causal inference, and graph-based techniques to explore patterns of resilience across watersheds worldwide.

How did you end up where you are today?

I originally hail from Sudan, nestled at the heart of Africa. Growing up along the banks of the Nile River, I developed an early fascination with water and its profound connection to humanity. On one hand, it provides people with their needs for drinking, agriculture, transportation, and recreation. On the other hand, an excess or shortage of water often results in devastating natural disasters, such as floods, droughts, and famines. Throughout antiquity, humans have endeavored to regulate rivers by building dams, canals, and various other structures. This deep-seated interest in water sciences and related engineering disciplines led me to pursue a degree in Civil Engineering.

Following my college graduation, I chose to embark on graduate studies to delve deeper into the intricate relationship between climate change and the water cycle. Embarking on an arduous 18-hour flight, I traversed the vast Atlantic Ocean and the continental expanse of the United States to arrive in California, the Golden State. There, I successfully completed my MSc and PhD degrees at the University of California, Irvine, in just under five years. Subsequently, I relocated northward to Berkeley, where I conducted my postdoctoral research, focusing on the impact of global warming on climate extreme events. I come to University of Michigan with a deep research interest in exploring the impact of global warming on extreme events and the resilience of ecosystems to such events. My research group harness recent advances in data science (machine learning, causal inference and information theory) to obtain new mechanistic and predictive insights on these questions with the ultimate goal of informing climate change adaptation strategies.

Sep 14
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Chuan Zhou

Chuan Zhou

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With a passion for developing decision support systems that integrate cutting edge techniques from artificial intelligence, quantitative image analysis, computer vision, and multimodal biomedical data fusion. Research interests have been focusing on characterizing diseases abnormalities and predicting their likelihood of being significant, with the goal to enable early diagnosis and risk stratification, as well as aiding treatment decision making and monitoring.

Sep 14
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Kamran Diba

Kamran Diba

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My lab is primarily interested in how the brain represents, coordinates, and stores memories. Hippocampal neuronal networks generate an assortment of firing patterns that vary depending on the behavior and state of an animal, from active exploration to resting and different stages of sleep. In our lab’s extracellular recordings from large populations of spiking neurons in rodents, we observe state-dependent temporal relationships between activities at multiple timescales. Recent work in my lab is aimed at understanding what role these unique spike patterns play and what they tell us about the function and limitations of different brain states for memory in healthy and compromised animals. To answer these and related questions, we combine behavioral studies of freely moving, learning and exploring rats, multi-channel recordings of the simultaneous electrical (spiking) activity from hundreds of neurons during behavior, sleep and sleep-deprivation, statistical and machine learning tools to uncover deep structure within high-dimensional spike trains, and chemogenetics and optogenetics to manipulate protein signaling and action potentials in specific neural populations in precise time windows.

Spike times recorded from a population of hippocampal neurons during running on a maze.

Spike times recorded from a population of hippocampal neurons during running on a maze.

What are some of your most interesting projects?

Evaluating the impact of sleep loss on hippocampal replay.
Using unsupervised machine learning to evaluate the temporal structure of hippocampal firing patterns during sleep.

What is the most significant scientific contribution you would like to make?

Understand how the hippocampus serves memory and what role sleep plays in this process.

What makes you excited about your data science and AI research?

The potential for AI models to help explain how the brain works.

Sep 14
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Bing Ye

Bing Ye

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The focus of our research is to address (1) how neuronal development contributes to the assembly and function of the nervous system, and (2) how defects in this process lead to brain disorders. We take a multidisciplinary approach that include genetics, cell biology, developmental biology, biochemistry, advanced imaging (for neuronal structures and activity), electrophysiology, computation (including machine learning and computer vision) and behavioral studies.

We are currently studying the neural basis for decision accuracy. We established imaging and computational methods for analyzing neural activities in the entire central nervous system (CNS) of the Drosophila larva. Moreover, we are exploring the possibility of applying the biological neural algorithms to robotics for testing these algorithms and for improving robot performance.

A major goal of neuroscience is to understand the neural basis for behavior, which requires accurate and efficient quantifications of behavior. To this end, we recently developed a software tool—named LabGym—for automatic identification and quantification of user-defined behavior through artificial intelligence. This tool is not restricted to a specific species or a set of behaviors. The updated version (LabGym2) can analyze social behavior and behavior in dynamic backgrounds. We are further developing LabGym and other computational tools for behavioral analyses in wild animals and in medicine.

The behavior that this chipmunk performed was identified and quantified by LabGym, an AI-based software tool that the Ye lab developed for quantifying user-defined behaviors.

The behavior that this chipmunk performed was identified and quantified by LabGym, an AI-based software tool that the Ye lab developed for quantifying user-defined behaviors.

What are some of your most interesting projects?

1) Develop AI-based software tools for analyzing the behavior of wild animals and human.
2) Use biology-inspired robotics to test biological neural algorithms.

How did you end up where you are today?

Since my teenage years, I have been curious about how brains (human’s and animals’) work, enjoyed playing with electronics, and learning about computational sciences. My curiosity and opportunities led me to become a neuroscientist. When I had my own research team and the resources to explore my other interests, I started to build simple electronic devices for my neuroscience research and to collaborate with computational scientists who are experts in machine learning and computer vision. My lab now combines these approaches in our neuroscience research.

What makes you excited about your data science and AI research?

I am very excited about the interactions between neuroscience and data science/AI research. This is a new area and has great potential of changing the society.

Sep 05
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jjpark

Jeong Joon Park

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3D reconstruction and generative models. I use neural and physical 3D representations to generate realistic 3D objects and scenes. The current focus is large-scale, dynamic, and interactable 3D scene generations. These generative models will be greatly useful for content creators, like games or movies, or for autonomous agent training in virtual environments. For my research, I frequently use and adopt generative modeling techniques such as auto-decoders, GANs, or Diffusion Models.

In my project “DeepSDF,” I suggested a new representation for a 3D generative model that made a breakthrough in the field. The question I answered is: “what should the 3D model be generating? Points, meshes, or voxels?” In DeepSDF paper, I proposed that we should generate a “function,” that takes input as a 3D coordinate and outputs a field value corresponding to that coordinate, where the “function” is represented as a neural network. This neural coordinate-based representation is memory-efficient, differentiable, and expressive, and is at the core of huge progress our community has made for 3D generative modeling and reconstruction.

3D faces with apperance and geometry generated by our AI model

Two contributions I would like to make. First, I would like to enable AI generation of large-scale, dynamic, and interactable 3D world, which will benefit entertainment, autonomous agent training (robotics and self-driving) and various other scientific fields such as 3D medical imaging. Second, I would like to devise a new and more efficient neural network architecture that mimics our brains better. The current AI models are highly inefficient in terms of how they learn from data (requires a huge number of labels), difficult to train continuously and with verbal/visual instructions. I would like to develop a new architecture and learning methods that address these current limitations.

Aug 14
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Merve Hickok

Merve Hickok

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Merve will strengthen MIDAS effort to develop best practices and training for the responsible use of data and AI in academic research, strengthen large U-M grant proposals’ responsible data and AI components, and provide insights on AI policy and regulatory priorities to help bridge research with applied work. 

Merve Hickok is the founder of AIethicist.org. She is a globally renowned expert on AI policy, ethics and governance. Her contributions and perspective have featured in the Guardian, CNN, Forbes, Bloomberg, Wired, Scientific American, Politico, Protocol, Vox, The Economist and S&P. Her research, training and consulting work focuses on the impact of AI systems on individuals, society, public and private organizations – with a particular focus on fundamental rights, democratic values, and social justice. She provides consultancy to C-suite leaders, and training services to public and private organizations on Responsible AI development, due diligence and governance. She also teaches data ethics at University of Michigan, and serves as a Board member in multiple organizations.

Merve is the President and Research Director at Center for AI & Digital Policy, deeply engaged in global AI policy and regulatory work. The Center educates AI policy practitioners and advocates across 60+ countries, advises international organizations (such as European Commission, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, OECD).

Merve has provided testimony to the US Congress, State of California Civil Rights Office, New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, Detroit City Council, and many global organizations interested in AI policy and ethics. 

Merve also works with several non-profit organizations globally to advance both the academic and professional research in this field for underrepresented groups. She has been recognized by a number of organizations – most recently as one of the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics™ – 2021, and as Runner-up for Responsible AI Leader of the Year – 2022 (Women in AI).

Previously, Merve held various senior roles in Fortune 100 companies for more than 15 years.

Aug 04
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Liyue Shen

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My research interest is in Biomedical AI, which lies in the interdisciplinary areas of machine learning, computer vision, signal and image processing, medical image analysis, biomedical imaging, and data science. I am particularly interested in developing efficient and reliable AI/ML-driven computational methods for biomedical imaging and informatics to tackle real-world biomedicine and healthcare problems, including but not limited to, personalized cancer treatment, and precision medicine.

In the field of AI/ML, we focus on developing reliable, generalizable, data-efficient machine learning and deep learning algorithms by exploiting prior knowledge from the physical world, such as: Prior-integrated learning for data-efficient ML Uncertainty awareness for trustworthy ML. In the field of Biomedicine, we focus on developing efficient computational methods for biomedical imaging and biomedical data analysis to advance precision medicine and personalized treatment, such as: Multi-modal data analysis for decision making Clinical trial translation for real-world deployment.

In the field of AI/ML, we focus on developing reliable, generalizable, data-efficient machine learning and deep learning algorithms by exploiting prior knowledge from the physical world, such as: Prior-integrated learning for data-efficient ML Uncertainty awareness for trustworthy ML. In the field of Biomedicine, we focus on developing efficient computational methods for biomedical imaging and biomedical data analysis to advance precision medicine and personalized treatment, such as: Multi-modal data analysis for decision making Clinical trial translation for real-world deployment.

What are some of your most interesting projects?

Our goal is to develop efficient and reliable AI/ML-driven computational methods for biomedical imaging and informatics to tackle real-world biomedicine and healthcare problems. We hope the technology advancement in AI and ML can help us to better understand human health in different levels. Specifically, we develop Biomedical AI in different parts, including:
– AI in Biomedical Imaging: develop novel machine learning algorithms to advance biomedical imaging techniques for obtaining computational images with improved quality. Specifically, relevant topics include but not limited to: Implicit neural representation learning; Diffusion model / Score-based generative model; Physics-aware / Geometry-informed deep learning.
– AI in Biomedical Image Processing and Bioinformatics: develop robust and efficient machine learning algorithms to extract useful information from multimodal biomedical data for assisting decision making and precision medicine. Specifically, relevant topics include but not limited to: Multimodal representation learning; Robust learning with missing data / noisy labeling; Data-efficient learning such as self- / un- / semi-supervised learning with limited data / labels.

How did you end up where you are today?

I am an assistant professor in the ECE Division of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department of the College of Engineering, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. Before this, I received my Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University. I obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2016. I is the recipient of Stanford Bio-X Bowes Graduate Student Fellowship (2019-2022), and was selected as the Rising Star in EECS by MIT and the Rising Star in Data Science by The University of Chicago in 2021.