Office Hours: What e-HAIL’s Grant Writer, Programmer, and Other Support Can Do for You

Where e-HAIL’s regular biweekly Friday sessions focus on community building and grant development, periodic virtual office hours and information sessions serve to introduce members to the support e-HAIL can provide for joint grant applications at the intersection of AI and health. Each office hours focuses on a specific service or source of support: grant writing and editing; programming; and programs for preliminary data collection and analysis (student summer support and dataset creation awards). Special sessions in the past year have addressed timely issues around diversification of funding sources for research and science communication. 

At a recent session, e-HAIL programmer Ye Chan Kim presented an overview of the support he can provide leading up to a grant application. This includes designing and implementing AI/ML models from scratch, building end-to-end pipeline to streamline the process, and building datasets, and optimizing models and deploying them in clinical workflows. It also involves supporting existing projects to enable them to scale up in a next, externally funded iteration, as well as technical consulting to ensure that appropriate AI architectures are applied to healthcare challenges. By way of illustration of “what a programmer can do for you,” Kim provided the audience of some 10 e-HAIL members a brief overview of two recent projects, one rebuilding a single-session therapy tool into a multi-session expressive interviewing platform, and another modernizing SpliceO, a genomics workflow for antisense-oligonucleotide design that he re-engineered into a reproducible end-to-end pipeline. 

Another well-attended session this year was e-HAIL grant writer Hossam Abouzahr’s session about non-federal sources of funding. Based on his research into funders and funder interest in the space of AI and Health, Abouzahr presented specific examples of opportunities in different categories: non-profit organizations and foundations; for-profit and private companies; state governments (such as the state of Michigan); and field-specific organizations. With the increased interest in non-government funding in the wake of recent changes at NIH and NSF, the session provided a welcome orientation to the attendees, some of whom ended up submitting proposals to the calls that were presented.

Abouzahr presented another session together with ROMS fellow Bahaar Chawla about the essentials of science communication, or sharing scientific research with the public in an accessible and easily understood manner. Compared to more traditional research communication, science communication is distinguished by the need for timeliness, relevance to current issues, and writing with the audience in mind. The presentation specifically addressed the challenges of communicating in larger, multidisciplinary teams, given the fact that e-HAIL works with a dyad model of bringing together AI and health experts from different disciplinary backgrounds. 

Chawla and Abouzahr provided practical guidance, such as workflow planning for writing an article, potential pitfalls, and techniques for respecting diverse perspectives. They highlighted various goals or reasons to engage in science communication, ranging from reaching audiences beyond the academic community, promoting scientific literacy, raising public awareness, influencing behavior and policy, and attracting potential donors. They also covered various media channels (articles, interviews, social media, podcasts, etc.), including the pros and cons of each platform and the advice to choose what works best for the message one wants to convey and the audience one wants to reach. During the Q&A, attendees asked about opportunities to further explore science communication, and some indicated that they already had ideas in mind on which they would like to work.

Interested in grant writing or AI/ML programmer support? e-HAIL member dyads may request support here:

Request grant writing assistance (if prompted, use UMICH login)

Request AI/ML programmer support (if prompted, use UMICH login)