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OUR TEAM
Principal Investigator

Ulas Bagci, Ph. D.
Dr Ulas Bagci is an Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Northwestern University’s Radiology and Biomedical Engineering Department at Chicago.
His research interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning and their applications in biomedical and clinical imaging. Dr. Bagci has more than 250 peer-reviewed articles on these topics.
Previously, he was a staff scientist and lab co-manager at the National Institutes of Health’s radiology and imaging sciences department, center for infectious disease imaging. Dr. Bagci holds two NIH R01 grants (as Principal Investigator) and serves as a steering committee member of AIR (artificial intelligence resource) at the NIH. Dr. Bagci also serves as an area chair for MICCAI for several years and he is an associate editor of top-tier journals in his fields such as IEEE Trans. on Medical Imaging, Medical Physics, and Medical Image Analysis. Prof. Bagci teaches machine learning, advanced deep learning methods, computer and robot vision, and medical imaging courses. He has several international and national recognitions including best paper and reviewer awards.
OUR TEAM
Postdoctoral Researchers

Armstrong Aboah,
Ph. D.
I am a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, working with Dr. Ulas Bagci as my principal investigator. Formerly, I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Missouri-Columbia under the supervision of Yaw Adu-Gyamfi , where I worked as a research assistant on numerous projects. I have hands-on experience developing innovative database solutions, statistical models, data products, and computer vision systems for the purpose of enhancing transportation system management and operations.

Elif Keles, MD, Ph.D.
I am a Doctor of Medicine, a pediatrician, and a neonatologist. I have received my MD degree and completed pediatric residency and neonatology fellowship at the Gazi University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara. I have also completed a Neuroscience PhD at Gazi University in Turkey. Currently, I am a Senior Clinical Research Associate and a research fellow in Artificial Intelligence in Medicine in the Department of Radiology, Machine & Hybrid Intelligence Lab, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. I conduct research bridging cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) and high-risk medical applications such as disease diagnosis, treatment planning, and response prediction. computer-aided diagnosis systems for diseased conditions.

Debesh Jha, Ph.D.
I am a research associate who is passionate about developing robust deep learning algorithms, evaluation tools and open-access medical datasets for the machine learning community. Currently, I work on projects related to radiation oncology, dose prediction, radiation therapy, liver cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, colon cancer, and pancreatic cancer.
In the recent past, I developed algorithms for fully automated support systems and datasets for lower GI endoscopy (colonoscopy), whole gastrointestinal tract, and surgical instruments. My broad research interest includes applying deep learning techniques to solve problems related to medical image analysis. My major contributions are in the area of medical image segmentation.

Matt Antalek, MD
I am an MD and currently an integrated IR/DR resident at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I studied mathematics and biochemistry as an undergraduate and have been developing statistical models and image processing software since my first research position at the NIH NIBIB in 2013. I am focused on developing AI technologies to automatically segment, detect and analyze hepatocellular carinoma tumors at large scale from MRI pre-treatment imaging studies in order to improve patient selection and therapeutic outcomes.
OUR TEAM
Graduate Students

Zheyuan Zhang
I am Zheyuan Zhang, Currently pursing a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University supervised by Prof. Ulas Bagci. My research interests are continual learning, domain generalization and particularly focusing on robust and accurate biomedical image segmenation. Previously I got my B.S at Tsinghua University and did research intern at Johns Hopkins University.

Ilkin Isler
I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Central Florida and working as a research assistant, supervised by Prof. Turgut (UCF) and Prof. Bagci (Northwestern) jointly. My research interests are in the intersection of deep learning prediction algorithms for high-risk applications such as medical imaging. Specifically I aim to develop explainable, trustable AI systems that can be used for radiation oncology and radiology systems.

Lanhong Yao
I recently graduated from Northwestern with a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. My research in brain tumor segmentation continued after graduation, Now as a research specialist, I am working on radiomics for survival analysis, for both IPMN (pancreas)and HGG glioma (brain) patients. Interests: deep learning, computer vision, medical imaging, healthcare and finance.

Bin Wang
I am currently pursing a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University, supervised by Prof. Ulas Bagci. My research interests are object detection, eye-tracking system. I got my B.S at ShanghaiTech University previously.

Abhishek Srivastava
I am a Post-Baccalaureate fellow at Northwestern University working under the supervision of Dr Ulas Bagci. I completed my B Tech from Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida in 2021 in the field of Computer Science and Engineering. Previously, I was a computer vision research associate at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unit, Indian Statistical Institute working under the supervision of Dr Umapada Pal and Dr Sukalpa Chanda. My research interests are medical image analysis, face super-resolution, document analysis, and remote vital measurement.

Ugur Demir
Ugur Demir is a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at Northwestern University. He completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Computer Engineering at Istanbul Technical University. He started his Ph.D. at the University of Central Florida in 2019 focusing on video analysis and image generation. In 2021, he transferred to Northwestern University to join Machine and Hybrid Intelligence Lab. His fields of interest include model robustness, model interpretability, and representation learning for medical images.
OUR TEAM
Visiting Students

Hongyi Pan
Hongyi Pan is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois Chicago, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, supervised by Prof. Ahmet Enis Cetin. After he receives the Ph.D. degree in the summer of 2023, he will become a postdoctoral research fellow at Northwestern University, supervised by Prof. Ulas Bagci. His research interests include image processing, computer vision, and digital signal processing, specifically on efficient computation, frequency-analysis-based neural networks, and kernel PCA. Hoyi will join our group as Pos.Doc after graduation.

Xin Zhu
I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois Chicago, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, supervised by Prof. Ahmet Enis Cetin. My research interests are signal processing. Specifically, I study deep learning algorithms for data compression applications and eye tracking. Previously I received the Masters by Research degree from Xidian University and University of Illinois at Chicago at the same time. I once worked as an intern in Samsung Research Institute in 2021.

Necip Gengeç
I am a Ph.D. candidate at the Istanbul Technical University (ITU) supervised by Prof. Dr. Ergin Tarı. I also got my BSc (2007) and MSc (2010) from ITU and I have been working in industry ever since. My research focus is application of deep learning and computer vision into multi modal data and understanding model generalization. I am in colaboration with Prof. Bagci and his lab related to my Ph.D studies.
OUR TEAM
Alumni
- Rodney LaLonde (Ph.D. student), Now Senior R&D Engineer at Kitware.
- AliAsghar Mortazi (Ph.D. student), Now Post-Doc at UPenn.
- Naji Khosravan (Ph.D student), Now Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Zillow.
- Harish RaviPrakash (Ph.D. student), Now Senior Machine Learning Scientist at AstraZenaca.
- Sarfaraz Hussein (Ph.D. student), Now Principal Machine Learning Scientist at Symantec Corp.
- Ismail Irmakci (Ph.D. student), Now Research associate at Northwestern University after becoming faculty at Ege University, Turkey
- Samira Masoudi (Vising Ph.D. student), Now Post-Doc at University of California San Diego, after completing NIH post-doc fellowship.
- Neslisah Torosdagli (Ph.D. student, UCF), Now Software Engineer
- Arjun Watane (Undergraduate student), Now Resident at Yale University after finishing medical school at University of Miami.
- Nandakishore Puttashamachar (MSc. student), Now Applied Computer Vision Scientist at GumGum / Los Angeles
- Ziyue Xu (PostDoc), Now Senior Scientist at NVIDIA (previously became a staff scientist at NIH).
- Awais Mansoor (PostDoc), Now PostDoc at Children’s Hospital, DC.
- Mingchen Gao (PostDoc), Now Assistant Professor at University of Buffalo.
- Poay Hoon Lim (Ph.D. student), Now PostDoc at University of Montreal, Canada.
- Kirsten Jaster-Miller (Post-Bac student), Now Physician in Cleveland/OH (after her MedSchool at Case Western Reserce/Cleveland Clinics).
- Brent Foster (Post-Bac student), Now Post-doc at Yale University after finishing Ph.D. at University of California at Davis.
- Mario Buty (Post-Bac studet), Now Engineer in IMPAQ International.
- Aaron Wu (Post-Bac studet), Now Engineer in CuraCloud.
- Neil Mendhiratta (Intern, NIH), Now UCLA-Urology (MD, Resident).