Health & Technology Workshop: AI & VR for 21st Century Healthcare & Education

Agenda Summary 
Check in and all refreshments will be in the Tauck Family Lobby (main entrance) of the Business Innovation Building. The workshop will be held in Room 107.

This event is co-sponsored by I-DISC / P.C. Rossin College of Engineering & Applied Science, the College of Education, and the College of Health 

Speaker Bios

Lifang He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University. She received her PhD degree in Computer Science from South China University of Technology. Her research interest primarily lies in the areas of machine learning and data mining, particularly with tensor analysis and deep learning for medical data, such as brain network and neuroimaging analysis. She has published more than 100 papers on top venues of both machine learning and medicine, with an H-index of 38 and over 4000 citations. Dr. He has been serving as the chair of the Computer Science Chapter at the IEEE Lehigh Valley Section since 2023 January.

Dr. Afsaneh Doryab is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. Before joining UVA, she worked as a Systems Scientist at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Doryab works on the computational modeling of human behavior from multimodal data streams. Over the past ten years, she has designed and developed applications, algorithms, and frameworks to collect, process, model, and analyze multimodal data from smartphones, wearables, and embedded sensors. She has combined physiological, psychological, and behavioral data with advanced computational modeling and machine learning methods to detect a variety of risk health states with high accuracy, including mood states in people with bipolar or unipolar depression, loneliness, quality of sleep, and severity of physiological and psychological symptoms in cancer patients. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health.

Dr. Yuan Luo is Chief AI Officer at Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) and Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine, and Associate Professor at Department of Preventive Medicine, at Feinberg School of Medicine in Northwestern University. Globally recognized for his leadership and significant contributions to biomedical AI, Dr. Luo has earned the prestigious titles of elected Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) and elected Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). As a pioneer in the development of multi-modal AI and data science frameworks, Dr. Luo's work focuses on understanding complex diseases and informing targeted therapies. His groundbreaking research has been featured in leading journals, including JAMA, Nature Medicine, and Nature Biotechnology. Dr. Luo has given numerous keynotes to both academia and industry and has chaired multiple conferences and workshops. With a publication record of over 160 peer-reviewed papers, Dr. Luo's work has been cited by scientists across more than 30 different countries and 25 research areas.

Chris Hartshorn is the chief of the Digital & Mobile Technologies Section of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program Branch within NCATS’ Division of Clinical Innovation, where he manages and coordinates programmatic and research activities relevant to the section. Prior to joining NCATS, he served as a program director in the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). During his tenure at the NIH, he has guided and managed multiple programs including the NIH Academic–Industrial Partnerships, the NIH Common Fund’s Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program, and the Bridge to Artificial Intelligence program. Through these programs, he established the AI for Multimodal Data Modeling and Bioinformatics Center and several corollary efforts. A principal focus for Hartshorn has been establishing initiatives to bring more care, to more patients remotely by way of sophisticated multimodal analytical methods, artificial intelligence (AI), and novel biomedical technologies. Prior to joining NIH, Hartshorn was a research staff member at the National Institute of Standards and Technology for projects focused on biomedical and national security applications, as well as subsequent collaborations with the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Justice, NIH, Merck and Pfizer.

Dr. Walter Greenleaf is a neuroscience researcher, a medical technology developer and entrepreneur, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. Walter has over 30 years of R&D experience and is a leading authority in digital medicine and VR technologies, focusing on applying new technologies to identify and manage cognitive, behavioral, and psychiatric disorders. Walter is the Chief Science Officer for Interaxon and an advisor to Penumbra, SoftMatter, and the US Veterans Health Administration. At Stanford, Walter works to develop next-generation wearable sensors and analytics as part of the eWear Program at the Stanford School of Engineering.  He also works with the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab. In addition to his academic work, Walter is the technology and neuroscience advisor to several medical product companies, investment groups, as well as scores of behavioral medicine companies.

Joshua M. Langberg, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, Professor of Psychology, and Director of the Center for Youth Social Emotional Wellness (CYSEW) at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina in 2006 and completed his pre-doctoral internship at Duke University Medical Center and postdoctoral fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Dr. Langberg is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology author of over 140 peer-reviewed publications and 3 books focused on ADHD and adolescent and emerging adult mental health. He has served as the principal investigator on several large grant awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Prior to his position at Rutgers, he served as a Professor of Psychology and the Associate Dean for Research and Operations for the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).

Dr. Alec M. Bodzin is Professor in the Teaching, Learning, and Technology program and is a core faculty member of the Lehigh Environmental Initiative. His research interests involve the design of immersive virtual reality learning environments, engagement and learning, learning with spatial thinking tools including GIS, learning design, design and implementation of inquiry-based science and environmental curriculum, learning technologies, game-based learning, and environmental literacy and education for sustainable development. 

Biplab Bhattacharya is a Data Scientist Team Lead within the Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics group at Geisinger. As a member of the Geisinger AI Lab (GAIL), he worked on the NIH Long Covid Challenge that was placed second. His academic training is in operations research and health systems engineering from the SUNY Buffalo. His focus areas include simulation, optimization, and machine learning. At Geisinger, he has led predictive modelling projects relating to COVID-19, bed occupancy and the emergency department. Currently he is working on advanced analytics for CMS 5-star hospital reports and breast cancer screening.

Dr. Julie Schweitzer is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis. She is a licensed psychologist and directs the Attention, Impulsivity, Regulation (AIR)/ADHD Program at the UC Davis MIND Institute. Her work is translational in nature where she uses cognitive neuroscience and behavior analytic principles to investigate attention and impulsivity in children and adults in typical development and in ADHD. She is also developing tech-based interventions using virtual reality and game play to improve attention, self-control and academic functioning. She combines fMRI, DTI, eye-tracking, behavioral and clinical measures in her work. She has been awarded several grants from NIH and other federal agencies for work in ADHD and autism. Dr. Schweitzer is active in training translational scientists across UC Davis Health and is the Director of the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Center Mentored Clinical Research Training Program, the Mentoring Academy for Research Excellence, and co-Director of the TL1 Postdoctoral Training program.

Amy Sussman joined the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in 2010 and is currently serving as the program officer for the Early Intervention and Early Learning in Special Education portfolio and the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Research Network within the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER). Before arriving at IES, she was the program director for the Developmental and Learning Sciences program at the National Science Foundation, adjunct faculty member and researcher at Georgetown University, research analyst at the American Institutes for Research, and American Psychological Association Congressional Fellow. Her prior research focused on cognitive and social development within early care and education settings. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Yale University.

Ed Metz leads the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program at IES. In this role, Ed manages competitions and a portfolio of education technology projects, and specializes in working with industry leaders in developing technology products, research to test implementation in schools, and on business models for the private sector's commercialization of emerging forms of technology. In recent years, millions of students and educators have used products out of the ED/IES SBIR program. In his role since 2013, Ed has led the ED Games Expo, an annual event to showcase education technology learning games and technologies developed with the support of IES and more than 30 programs across government. Ed earned his Ph.D. in Human Development in 2003 from Catholic University, where he performed and published research on the impact of community service programs on high school students' civic engagement. Ed is a former AAAS/SRCD Executive Branch Fellow (2003–2004), a former Jesuit Volunteer Corps NW member (Yakima, WA, 1995–1996), and a graduate of Georgetown University (B.A., 1995).