The EIPM is thrilled to welcome the inaugural 'Bridge 2AI' Voice Summer School Class!
The project Voice as a Biomarker of Health is one of several recently funded projects of the NIH Common Fund’s Bridge2AI program, which is designed to use AI to tackle complex biomedical challenges.
"The voice project will aim to build an ethically sourced database of diverse human voices while protecting patient privacy," said EIPM Director Olivier Elemento, Ph.D. "Using this data, machine learning models will be trained to spot diseases by detecting changes in the human voice, which could empower doctors with a low-cost diagnostic tool to be used alongside other clinical methods."
This inaugural Voice Summer School is an innovative educational experience, and part of a larger multi-site, interdisciplinary, collaborative effort featuring innovative, hands-on learning experiences uniting students from health science and computer science backgrounds. Summer interns will be provided with a unique and innovative opportunity for students in health, informatics, data, computer science and related fields to collaborate and learn about the creation of voice biomarkers using Artificial Intelligence. The WCM program is hosted by the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine and runs from July 1 – August 2, 2024.
"The highly-innovative curriculum will include processing voice audio, extracting and choosing acoustic and linguistic features, training and testing voice algorithms, as well as the social and ethical implications of working with voice data," added Dr. Elemento.
The other academic sites involved in the program include the University of South Florida (USF), Washington University in St. Louis, and Oregon Health & Science University, are in the process of onboarding up to 10 students each. The program culminates with a hackathon event at USF on August 10th-11th, where some 40 medical and engineering students will compete against each other to develop the best models to answer tangible clinical questions using public voice datasets and have prime access to preliminary voice data from the Voice Data Generation.
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Aarush Mathur is currently pursuing a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence at Michigan State University. He completed his Master’s degree in the same field and institution in 2023. Under the guidance of Dr. Nihar Mahapatra, his research focuses on studying the impact of stuttered speech and other speech disfluencies on various AI models. Prior to joining the PhD program, he amassed over three and a half years of industry experience as an Android Developer, which equipped him with practical skills and a deeper understanding of software applications. His decision to enroll in the Bridge2AI program stemmed from its innovative research focus on creating voice biomarkers using Artificial Intelligence, aligning with his academic interests and career aspirations.
Alexander (AJ) Berman is currently finishing his first year as a medical student at Weill Cornell Medicine. Before medical school, he had a career as a software engineer, and is looking forward to combining his interests in technology and AI with his current training in medicine. Outside of the classroom, AJ enjoys playing classical music on his bassoon, cooking, and playing board games.
Haomiao Li is a first-year graduate student specializing in Health Tech at Cornell Tech. Leveraging his expertise in Computer Science and Mathematical Science, Haomiao focuses on developing innovative digital health solutions. His professional experience includes a significant internship at Robert Bosch GmbH, where he optimized production processes through advanced data analysis algorithms. Passionate about the convergence of technology and healthcare, Haomiao is actively involved in a project on Early Screening of Parkinson’s Disease through Handwriting Analysis Using Supervised Contrastive Learning, guided by experts in the field. This work exemplifies his commitment to advancing healthcare through technological innovation.
Hudson Margolis recently completed his sophomore year at Carnegie Mellon University where he is pursuing a B.S. in Biology with a minor in Computational Biology. He is a co-author on a paper published in the journal of plant interactions about the microbial components of the cultivation of Rafflesia speciosa. Hudson is from Brooklyn, New York and is a film buff, dog owner, and Jets fan.
Marie Owino is a dedicated Master of Public Health student at Drexel University specializing in epidemiology with a minor in global health. With a passion for working at the intersection of health and technology, Marie would like to focus on leveraging technological advancements to promote global health equity. Her academic journey has been marked by a commitment to understanding and addressing health disparities on the local to global scale, and her research interests include using data analytics and AI to enhance disease surveillance and improve health outcomes for racial and gender minorities.
Marisa Presutto is from Syracuse, NY and graduated from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 2021 with a B.S. in Biology. She is currently a second year medical student at Weill Cornell Medical College with an interest in oncology. At WCMC, she is on the board for the Weill Cornell Street Medicine Clinic in East Harlem and acts as the Chair of Community Engagement for the WCM Music and Medicine Initiative. In her free time, she sings in a jazz band and enjoys trying new recipes in the kitchen.
Matthew Leopold is a sophomore at Boston College studying computer science. Through my projects, I hope to create meaningful software which enacts positive change in the world. I am proficient in Python, C, Java, C#, and HTML. Having experience in unity game development, web design, and systems level programming, I have a wide range of experiences to draw on in developing new experiences. My current and past projects can be found at my website matt-leopold.com.
Sam Rashkovich, MD, MBA is a recent graduate of Weill Cornell Medical College and the Cornell SC Johnson Graduate School of Management. He plans to pursue a career in psychiatry and is passionate about the intersection of mental health care and technology. Originally from Westchester, New York, Sam completed his undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College, then shifted internationally and spent most of his twenties living in Japan. He worked primarily in communications, public relations, and translation, before returning to the United States and making a career change toward medicine.
William J. Reid is a Master of Science in Information Systems student at Cornell Tech. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Rochester Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering, complemented by minors in Industrial Engineering and French, and concentrations in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. William’s professional journey includes significant roles in biomedical engineering, where he has honed his skills in machine learning, computer vision, biomedical signals and image processing. As a Senior Biomedical Engineer at Spectral AI, he worked closely with clinicians, data scientists, and cross-functional engineers to develop a medical imaging device and an artificial intelligence platform to predict how burn wounds and diabetic foot ulcers will heal. At Medtronic, William contributed to the development of the Hugo RAS surgical robot, where he designed mechanical and electrical components, developed a 3D thermodynamic profile of the surgical robot to improve thermal management, and programmed scripts for hardware testing. His hands-on experience also extends to projects involving the detection of heart murmurs from phonocardiogram recordings, where he developed machine learning and deep learning models for heart sound classification, to facilitate the early detection and diagnosis of cardiac ailments using auditory biomarkers.
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