Researchers at the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Perelman School of Medicine received a four-year, $7 million grant award to develop artificial intelligence systems that support personalized medical treatment.
Supported by the grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, the project will be led by Rajeev Alur, a Computer and Information Science professor at the Engineering School and the director of the AI-enabled Systems: Safe, Explainable, and Trustworthy Center. The goal of the project is to assist clinicians in creating systems that predict treatment responses for breast cancer, heart attacks, and sepsis.
ARPA-H — one of the primary United States accelerators for technology working to advance health outcomes — focuses specifically on biomedical and health research that cannot be facilitated under traditional research or commercial activity. Instead, ARPA-H utilizes innovative new techniques to tackle pressing global issues.
“This is an exciting project that will bridge our expertise in AI with the clinical expertise of one of the world’s great health systems,” Engineering School Dean Vijay Kumar said in the announcement.
The close collaboration between the Engineering School and the Medical School is one of the key points emphasized by Alur and other co-principal investigators of the project, such as Qi Long, director of the Center for Cancer Data Science and associate director for Cancer Informatics at the Penn Institute for Biomedical Informatics.
Engineering School researchers will work closely with clinicians at the Medical School to gather data on real-world constraints, including health data availability, thresholds for various medical markers, and the compatibility of existing workflows with AI-powered systems. The ultimate goal is to drive better health outcomes.
The joint effort of the two schools is “critical” to the success of the project and in keeping pace with advances in AI, Vice Dean of Artificial Intelligence and Computing Marylyn Ritchie said in the announcement.
Alur, who was recently recognized by the 2024 Donald E. Knuth Prize for making lasting contributions to computer science, points to prior examples of successful collaboration between the two schools, including a symposium on trustworthy AI systems for healthcare and sharing seed grants to work on said systems.
Alur's work in developing formal languages and tools for verifying complex systems will be crucial to the project, according to Kumar.
“Clinical challenges present so many important and impactful use cases for AI, and Professor Alur has built a dream team to develop the foundations for trustworthy AI in medicine,” Kumar added.
Alongside Alur and Long, the other co-PIs for this project include Cardiovascular Medicine associate professor Rajat Deo, Cardiovascular Medicine assistant professor Sameed Khatana, Hematology-Oncology assistant professor Payal Shah, and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine assistant professor Gary Weissman. It also includes Engineering professor Mayur Naik and assistant professor Eric Wong. Outside of Penn, Ravi Parikh, professor in Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine, is also a contributor.
Penn’s growing presence in AI is aided by its recent addition of an undergraduate degree for AI, becoming the first Ivy League school to do so, and its launch of the Penn AI Council.
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