Conference: INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON DATA SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IN HEALTHCARE, MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY, JUNE 4 -10, 2023, CRETE, GREECE:

University Of Houston, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

Innovations in engineering and technology have significantly promoted and advanced scientific discoveries over the last few decades. These innovations have not only been rapid, but have also increased the quality and reduced the cost of healthcare and inspired new research areas, such as precision medicine. Additionally, these scientific discoveries reveal the importance of increased collaboration between researchers in medicine and engineering to address the problems and obstacles that arise in health care, and, most notably, for the development of new education directions to translate medical science and engineering concepts into curriculums and clinical research for the preparation of the next generation global healthcare workforce. The annual International Summer School BIO-X series, which was initiated in 2001, was designed to expose undergraduate and graduate students to these new research areas in an exciting international, collaborative, and interdisciplinary setting. In keeping with this plan, the focus of this year’s/the 20th summer school, which will be held June 4-10, 2023, Crete, Greece, with the participation of 30 undergraduate and graduate students and 10 faculty members, is on Data Science, which has the power to move the needle on critical issues in healthcare and medicine and shed light on the biological basis of health and disease using the tools, techniques, and theoretical underpinnings for enabling machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to extract “knowledge” from large and complex data sets. NSF funds will be used to support lodging, meal, and flight costs of U.S. students attending the conference. In recent decades, engineering and technological innovations have been rapid, increased the quality and reduced the cost of health and inspired new research areas to further contribute to global health care. This international summer school will focus on Data Science, sometimes defined as “a field of study that combines domain expertise, programming skills, and knowledge of mathematics and statistics to extract meaningful insights from data." Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial intelligence (AI) have already led to significant successes in many health-related fields, including medical image classification, segmentation, prediction, and decision making. The summer school aims to highlight and discuss the challenges and opportunities of Data Science innovations in healthcare, medicine, and biology and how these innovations can be translated into cutting-edge healthcare and biomedical engineering curricula. An international group of 10 faculty members (U.S., Germany, Israel, Singapore, and England) with diverse backgrounds (Data Science, biology, engineering, math, computer science, etc.) will give lectures and take part in panel discussions in which students are active participants. To illustrate their own research, student participants will provide posters that can be reviewed and discussed throughout the meeting. The panels will also focus on the challenges of making a career in the rapidly growing, interdisciplinary fields of Data Science in healthcare, medicine, and biology, from being hired as part of a team and finding exciting new research opportunities all the way up to becoming a team leader and what to look for when organizing that team and choosing its members. Options will be discussed for senior undergraduate and graduate studies and research internationally as well as within the U.S. and for collaboration among researchers and students internationally. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.