2025 AI & Health Symposium-Highlights

On Friday, September 12, more than 250 faculty, staff, and students from the Medical School, the College of Engineering, and a range of other Schools and Colleges, attended the 4th annual AI & Health Symposium. This year, the symposium was a partnership with AI & Digital Health Innovation (AI&DHI), with additional support from the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation (IHPI). Accelerating interdisciplinary collaborations through opportunities for engagement around AI & health research is a major focus of the e-HAIL initiative, and the symposium was set up to maximize learning from and connecting with fellow faculty researchers interested or working in this field.

Accelerating interdisciplinary collaborations through opportunities for engagement around AI & health research is a major focus of the e-HAIL initiative, and the symposium was set up to maximize learning from, and connecting with, fellow faculty researchers interested/working in this field. AI & DHI provides data services, computing resources, and expertise in clinical workflow integration at Michigan Medicine (free of charge) to all U-M researchers. Attendees learned more about all of these services and other U-M AI & Health-related resources.

The event kicked off with opening remarks from from Dr. Eric Michielssen, Associate Dean for Research at the College of Engineering and Louise Ganiard Johnson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. This was followed by a series of Lightning Talks moderated by Rada Milhalcea, PhD, Janice M. Jenkins Collegiate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, e-HAIL Co-lead Convener, that highlighted the work of four U-M faculty. The talks and participants included:

A Quest for Context: Computational Methods to Improve the Way We Represent and Utilize Patient DataM
Keith Feldman, PhD, Associate Professor, Learning Health Sciences

Integrating AI and Science-Based Models in Health
Alexander Rodriguez, PhD, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Dynamic Modeling of Patients, Modalities and Tasks via Multi-modal Multi-task Mixture of Experts
Liyue Shen, PhD, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Causal Inference with Unstructured Data
Yixin Wang, PhD, Assistant Professor, Statistics

Following the Lightning Talks, attendees had their choice of 16 discussion tables as part of the Tabletop Discussions: Research and Resources session. You can see the full list of topics and presenters here.

A poster session where teams of students and postdocs presented impressive, recent work took place during lunch, giving attendees the chance to interact, connect, and ask questions. You can see the full list of posters here.

Jenna Wiens, PhD, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, AI&DHI Co-director, began the afternoon portion of the symposium by introducing keynote speaker, Marinka Zitnik, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, who presented, Empowering Biomedical Discovery with “AI Scientists”.

A video research showcase gave e-HAIL members the chance to pre-record short videos that highlighted new research ideas and current projects, providing the opportunity for potential conversations and collaborations. View videos below and read summaries here.

Developing a Trusted AI Partner to Support Preventative Care
Amy Cohn, PhD, Professor and Chief Transformation Officer, Industrial and Operations Engineering

Towards Modeling Human Biorhythms Using Non-Invasive Approaches
Kapotaksha Das, PhD, Graduate Student Research Assistant and Graduate Student Instructor, U-M Dearborn
Mohamed Abouelenien, PhD, Associate Professor, Computer and Information Science, U-M Dearborn
Mihai Burzo, PhD, Professor of Engineering, College of Innovation and Technology, U-M Flint

Centering Patient Voices: A Digital Repository of Patients’ Experiences with Racism and Discrimination in Healthcare Settings
Bradley Iott, PhD, MPH, MS, Research Assistant Professor, Internal Medicine

Using AI to Predict Severe Injury After Car Crashes
Ray Jean, MD, MS, Clinical Assistant Professor, Surgery

Identifying Trauma Patient Phenotypes and their Respective Outcomes after Discharge
Bryant Oliphant, MD, MBA, MSc, Research Assistant Professor, Orthopaedic Surgery

Collaborative AI-mediated health tracking for children with Type 1 Diabetes
Sun Young Park, PhD, Associate Professor, Art & Design, Information

Proposal for National Registry of Health AI
Jodyn Platt, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Learning Health Sciences
Reema Hamasha, MHI, Research Area Specialist, Learning Health Sciences
Sean Tan, MPP, Lead Policy Researcher, Learning Health Sciences

Privacy-Preserving Sensors for Long-Term Health and Wellness Monitoring
Alanson Sample, PhD, Associate Professor, Computer Science & Engineering

Following the videos, Henrike J. Florusbosch, PhD, e-HAIL Program Manager, led an expert panel discussion focused on finding funding opportunities beyond federal sources. The panel was comprised of experts in research relations, business development, and corporate and foundation relations including:

Christine Muchanic, MA, Senior Director of Research Relations at the College of Engineering

Michael Ranella, MBA, MPH, Senior Director of Business Development at Fast Forward Medical Innovation (FFMI)

Colleen Sherman, Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at the Michigan Medicine Office of Development

The event wrapped up with Brahmajee Nallamothu, MD, MPH, introducing closing remarks from John Ayanian, MD, MPP; IHPI Director; Alice Hamilton Distinguished University Professor of Medicine and Healthcare Policy, Medical School and Steven L. Kunkel, PhD; Executive Vice Dean for Research, Medical School; Chief Scientific Officer, Michigan Medicine; Peter A. Ward Distinguished University Professor; Endowed Professor of Pathology Research.

Questions?

Contact J. Henrike Florusbosch, Ph.D., e-HAIL Program Manager, at jflorusb@umich.edu.