Southern University of Science and Technology (susTech)
Artificial Intelligence in Population Health Lab
Principal Investigator
Dr. Ye Ye
Associate Professor, Southern University of Science and Technology (susTech)
Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh, 2022-2025
Postdoctoral Associate, University of Pittsburgh, 2019-2022
Ph.D. in Intelligent Systems, University of Pittsburgh, 2018
M.S. in Public Health Informatics, Emory University, 2011
M.S. in Epidemiology and Health Statistics, Peking University, 2009
B.Med. in Preventive Medicine, Peking University, 2006
Email: yey3@sustech.edu.cn
Official Website: https://www.dbmi.pitt.edu/directory/name/ye-ye/
Students
Jiabao Li
Jiabao Li is a Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology. Jiabao obtained a master degree of computer science in Taiyuan University of technology. His current research focuses on large language models, foundation models, transfer learning, and federated learning. He aims to develop computational algorithms and advance multimodal technologies for processing multisource, heterogeneous data to support population health and biomedical research.
Website: ljb1585397316.github.io
Research Assistants
Jiuli Xiong
Jiuli Xiong is currently a research assistant at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). She received her master’s degree from the School of Biomedical Engineering at ShanghaiTech University, under the supervision of Prof. Dinggang Shen and Dr. Xiaohuan Cao.
Her research focuses on medical image processing, and now she is interested in the innovative applications of large language models and multimodal learning in the medical imaging field.
website: https://github.com/xiongjiuli
Yang He
Yang He is currently a research assistant. She is a master student majoring in data science at University of Macau. She received her bachelor’s degree of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from South China University of Technology.
Her research focuses on natural language processing, and now she is interested in large language models and AI agent. Yang He is currently a research assistant and a master’s student in Data Science at the University of Macau. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from South China University of Technology. Her research focuses on natural language processing, with current interests in large language models and AI agents.
Collaborators
Dr. Dongfeng Gu
Gu Dongfeng is academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, former Deputy Director of National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, former Vice President of Fuwai Hospital Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Acting Vice President of Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) and Chair Professor of Medical College of SUSTech. He obtained his bachelor’s degree of medicine in Nanjing Medical University in 1983, master degree of medicine and PhD degree in 1986 and 2007 respectively in Peking Union Medical College. He was a visiting scholar from 1990 to 1992, in Department of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota, USA, a visiting scholar in University of Toronto, Canada in 1997, and also as a visiting professor in Division of Human Genetics, University of Southampton, UK from Feb, 1999 to Feb, 2000.
He currently serves as the Vice President of Chinese Preventive Medicine Association, member of the expert consultation panel of Healthy China initiative, committee member of Medical Science Department of Academic Advisory Committee of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and Deputy Director of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Health and Environment, Biomedical Engineering and Information Science Department of Academic Advisory Committee of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Dr. Gu is a professor with specialties in preventive cardiology, epidemiology, and medical genetics as well. During the past thirty years, Dr. Gu has made outstanding contributions in the area of preventive cardiology and genetic etiology for cardiovascular disease, including helping identify major causes of death and main risk factors for cardiovascular diseases in Chinese adults, developed risk prediction model of cardiovascular diseases in China, formulated guidelines for cardiovascular disease prevention and control, and led genomic risk assessment for hyperlipidemia and coronary heart disease. He was awarded 16 national patents and two second prize award of National Science and Technology Progress Award. More than 300 SCI papers have been published, and his research results have been widely cited by domestic and international guidelines of disease prevention and control, authoritative textbooks and monographs of the World Health Organization.Email: gudf@sustech.edu.cn
Official Website: https://www.sustech.edu.cn/en/faculties/gudongfeng.html
Dr. Michael J. Becich
Chairman and Distinguished University Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics
Professor of Pathology, Information Sciences, Telecommunications and Clinical/Translational Sciences
Associate Vice Chancellor for Informatics in the Health Sciences
Director, Center for Commercial Application (CCA) of Healthcare Data
Associate Director for Cancer Institute (UPCI)
Associate Director, Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI)
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Research Interests: Translational Bioinformatics, Pathology Informatics, Oncology Informatics,
Tissue Banking Informatics, Research Resource Development, and Personalized Medicine
Email: becich@pitt.edu
Official Website: https://www.dbmi.pitt.edu/directory/name/michael-becich/
Dr. Gregory F. Cooper
Distinguished Professor and UPMC Endowed Chair, Department of Biomedical Informatics
Vice Chair of Research, Department of Biomedical Informatics
Secondary appointments: Intelligent Systems Program, Computational and Systems Biology, and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Research Interests: Application of decision theory, probability theory, Bayesian statistics, and artificial intelligence
to biomedical informatics research problems, Causal modeling and discovery from clinical and omics data,
Computer-aided medical diagnosis and prediction,
Machine-learning approaches to improving patient safety, and Biosurveillance of disease outbreaks
Email: gfc@pitt.edu
Official Website: https://www.dbmi.pitt.edu/directory/name/gregory-cooper/
Dr. Qi Li
Dr. Qi Li is an Associate Professor in the School of Business, SUNY New Paltz. Her teaching focuses on Business Analytics, including Data Analysis, Data Visualization, and Database system. Before she jointed SUNY, she worked in Norther Kentucky University as a Data Science Program Associate Director, teaching Data Science sequential courses, including, Data Wrangling, Data Mining, Big Data, and Data Science Capstone. She also worked in Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center as a researcher to study health care information. She graduated from University of Pittsburgh and studied on Information Science.
Email: liq11@newpaltz.edu
Official Website: https://www2.newpaltz.edu/~liq11/
Alumni
Yuhe Gao
Yuhe Gao was a data scientist in our lab. She received her B.S. in Geographic Information Science from the University of Cincinnati and East China Normal University (2+2 program) in 2020, and further achieved her M.S. in Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. She is currently working as a data scientist in this lab and also in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Her undergraduate studies focused on environmental quality, while her graduate studies delved into disease research. With the current and future experience working on various patient cohorts and EHR data, she is interested in combining her knowledge of GIS and biomedical informatics to improve the sensitivity of clinical data and develop insights at multiple levels, including the geographic level. Yuhe has been admitted to the PhD progam at Department of Computer Science, Emory University.
Email: yug51@pitt.edu
Chenxi Song
Chenxi Song was a software engineer in our lab. He received his master degree in Information Science at University of Pittsburgh in 2024. He is very interested in foundation models and large language models with the application in medicine. Chenxi has been admitted to the PhD progam at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the University of Texas at Arlington.
Email: chs342@pitt.edu
Yiming Sun
Yiming Sun is a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Pittsburgh, and she completed her bachelor degree in Computer Science from University of Science and Technology of China in 2022. Her research interests revolve around machine learning and healthcare data analysis. She is conducting a comprehensive survey on heterogeneous transfer learning, which aims to explore the latest developments in the field. Besides, she is involved in a project that focuses on detecting multiple diseases simultaneously, including COVID-19, through Bayesian network models.
Email: yis108@pitt.edu
Dr. Jason Xiaotian Dou
Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh. B.S. in Computer Science, Peking University.
Email: xid40@pitt.edu
website: jasondou.org.
Yuelyu Ji
Yuelyu Ji is a Phd student in Information Science at University of Pittsburgh. She works on the transfer learning project and working on using a natural language process idea in the transfer learning project and has one paper about using transfer learning to predict the readmission of different hospitals in Pittsburgh. Her research interest is using natural language process models to solve real-world problems.
Email: yuj49@pitt.edu
Dr. Runxue Bao
Currently an AI Research Scientist with the Foundation AI team at GE Healthcare
Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering 2022, University of Pittsburgh
B.S. in Electronic Information Engineering 2017, University of Science and Technology of China
My research interests are machine learning, deep learning, large-scale optimization, recommender system, transfer learning, and self-supervised learning.
Personal Website: https://brx18.github.io/
Disheng Liu
Disheng obtained his master degree in Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh in 2022. He worked in AI in Population Health lab from 2021 to 2022, focusing on transfer learning in the biomedical field. His personal research interests include heterogeneous transfer learning, machine learning fairness, and AI implementation in the industry. Disheng started his PhD at the Case Western Reserve University in 2024.