People

We share the same passion in developing AI tools for better healthcare.

OUR TEAM

Principal Investigator

Ulas Bagci, PhD

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.

Clinical Research Associates

Elif Keles, MD, PhD

Dr. Elif Keles, a physician specializing in pediatrics and neonatology, holds both an MD and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Gazi University, Ankara. Currently, she serves as a Clinical Research Associate and Research Fellow at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. There, she harnesses the power of AI to facilitate significant advancements in disease diagnosis, treatment planning, and response prediction. As a professional in the fields of neonatology, pediatrics, and neuroscience, Dr. Keles' vision is to foster collaboration between artificial intelligence and medical disciplines, contributing to the therapeutic use of AI in pediatrics.

Matt Antalek, MD

Dr. Matt Antalek, an integrated IR/DR resident at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, brings a unique blend of mathematics, biochemistry, and medical knowledge to his role. With an initial background in developing statistical models and image processing software at the NIH NIBIB, Dr. Antalek currently focuses on harnessing AI technologies to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. His work aims to automate the segmentation, detection, and analysis of tumors from MRI pre-treatment imaging studies, seeking to improve patient selection and therapeutic outcomes.

Alpay Medetalibeyoglu, MD

Dr. Medetalibeyoglu Alpay is an esteemed internal medicine specialist and associate professor at the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine. In collaboration with Professor Bagci, he has embarked on an ambitious artificial intelligence endeavor at the Hybrid AI Laboratory. Dr. Alpay offers invaluable clinical insights, particularly in pancreatic diseases, liver cirrhosis and diabetes. Anchored by a holistic approach, he is optimistic about achieving transformative outcomes in their research.

Vedat Cicek, MD

Dr. Vedat Cicek earned his medical degree from Istanbul Faculty of Medicine and later became a cardiologist by completing his residency at Health Sciences University in Istanbul, Turkey.Throughout his residency, Dr. Cicek actively engaged in scientific activities, focusing on algorithms related to the prognostic prediction of acute and chronic cardiovascular diseases.For his Ph.D. thesis, Dr. Cicek concentrated on predicting the prognosis of pulmonary embolism patients using artificial intelligence. Currently as a Clinical Research Associate in the Hybrid and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, he is dedicated to developing holistic AI solutions for predicting the prognosis of patients with pulmonary hypertension, chronic coronary syndrome, and cardioembolic stroke.

Gorkem Durak, MD

Dr. Gorkem Durak is a radiologist who has been practicing academic radiology in abdominal and thoracic radiology since completing his residency at Istanbul University, Faculty of Medicine. His research interests are advancing radiologist- centered AI, examining precancerous lesions, and evaluating cancer treatment responses. His research focuses on hepatobiliary, pancreatic, and lung diseases. He is working as a Clinical Research Associate under the guidance of Dr. Ulas Bagci.

Postdoctoral Researchers

Debesh Jha, PhD

Dr. Debesh Jha is a senior research associate with a deep passion for creating robust deep learning algorithms, evaluation tools and open-access medical datasets for the machine learning community. His current work focuses on radiation oncology, dose prediction, radiation therapy, liver cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, colon cancer, and pancreatic cancer. Known for his significant contributions in medical image segmentation, Dr. Jha's broad research interests involve leveraging deep learning techniques for medical image analysis, and he has developed algorithms for fully automated support systems and datasets for lower GI endoscopy (colonoscopy), whole gastrointestinal tract, and surgical instruments.

Hongyi Pan, PhD

Dr. Hongyi Pan is a dedicated postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, collaborating with Prof. Ulas Bagci. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Chicago's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, under the supervision of Prof. Ahmet Enis Cetin. Dr. Pan is currently developing an AI system to integrate computer-aided detection and diagnosis system with radiologists’ perceptive knowledge/pattern via eye-tracking. His research interests include image processing, computer vision, and digital signal processing, with a focus on efficient computation, orthogonal-transform-based neural networks, and kernel PCA.

Koushik Biswas, PhD

Dr. Koushik Biswas is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, working under the guidance of Dr. Ulas Bagci. He earned his P.hD. in Computer Science and Engineering from India. He is currently working on Adversarial robustness, diffusion models, brain tumor segmentation, and liver segmentation projects. His research interests are adversarial robustness, generalizable and interpretable ML, computer vision, medical image analysis, and the theory of deep learning.

Meghana Karri, PhD

Dr Meghana Karri is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Northwestern University, working under the guidance of Dr Ulas Bagci and Dr Yury Velichko. She earned her PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Dhanbad (IIT Dhanbad), Department of Computer Science and Engineering, under the supervision of Dr Annavarapu Chandra Sekhara Rao. Dr Meghana's current work uses different medical image modalities to focus on sarcoma, brain tumours, and liver cancer. Her research interests include Computer vision, Image processing, and leveraging deep learning methodologies for medical image analysis. Dr Meghana is recognized for her contributions to the segmentation of medical images.

Vanshali Sharma, PhD

Vanshali Sharma is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Northwestern University, working under the guidance of Dr. Ulas Bagci. She carried out her PhD research at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India, where she focused on developing innovative algorithms and deep learning techniques for medical image analysis using GANs, diffusion models, and advanced detection and segmentation methodologies. Her current work focuses on radiation oncology, dose prediction, and prognosis predictions for pulmonary embolism and cardiovascular diseases. Her research interests encompass the intersection of medical image analysis and deep learning, with a keen interest in foundation models, generative AI, multimodal learning, and few-shot learning.

Graduate Students

Ilkin Isler

Ilkin Isler is a dedicated Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at the University of Central Florida, where she also serves as a research assistant under the dual supervision of Prof. Turgut and Prof. Bagci from Northwestern University. Her research lies at the intersection of deep learning and high-risk applications such as medical imaging. Specifically, Ilkin's objective is to develop trustworthy, explainable AI systems for use in radiation oncology and radiology systems.

Abhishek Srivastava

Abhishek Srivastava is a Post-Baccalaureate fellow at Northwestern University, working under the guidance of Dr. Ulas Bagci. He graduated with a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida in 2021. Before joining Northwestern, Abhishek was a computer vision research associate at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, under the supervision of Dr. Umapada Pal and Dr. Sukalpa Chanda. His research interests encompass medical image analysis, face super-resolution, document analysis, and remote vital measurement.

Visiting Scholars & Affiliates

Professor Michael Wallace

Dr. Wallace is the Fred C. Andersen Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville. He received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1992. He completed a residency program in Internal Medicine in 1995 and a fellowship in Gastroenterology and Hepatology in 1998 at the Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts and a Master’s in Public Health with a focus on clinical research at the Harvard School of Public Health, and research fellowship in advanced imaging technology at Massachusetts's Institute of Technology. Dr. Wallace completed an advanced endoscopy fellowship in Endoscopic Ultrasound (EUS) and Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) in 1999 at the Medical University of South Carolina under Dr. Peter Cotton and Robert Hawes. He joined the Mayo Clinic in 2003, advancing to the rank of full professor in 2007, to Chair of the Division in 2010, and endowed professor (John C. Andersen Professorship) in 2019. Dr. Wallace has served multiple roles for the international GI societies such as the AGA, ASGE and ACG including Associate Editor for Gastroenterology 2006-09, National mentor of the year (AGA and ASGE) and chair of both ASGE and the World Endoscopy Organization (WEO) committee on Artificial Intelligence. From 2015-2022, he was Editor in Chief of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, advancing that journal to the # 1 rank in its category. His clinical and research interests focus on advanced imaging technologies for early gastrointestinal cancer detection and therapy including fundamental research in tissue spectroscopy, narrow band imaging, optical coherence tomography, and AI-computer vision systems. He has published more than 450 peer-reviewed articles, which have been cited more than 28,000 times, and carries an H-Index of 93, among the top 1% of academics worldwide.

Professor Frank Miller

Dr. Frank Miller is chief of the body imaging section and former fellowship director of the body MR predominant imaging fellowship. He is medical director of MR at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He is the Lee F. Rogers MD Endowed Professor of Medical Education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is the president of the Society of Abdominal Radiology from 2024-2025. He is the consulting editor for the Radiologic Clinics of North America and chief editor of Advances in Clinical Radiology. Dr. Miller graduated from the Honors Program of Medical Education at Northwestern University, was a resident at Northwestern University and did an abdominal imaging fellowship at Brigham and Women’s hospital, Harvard University, and mini-fellowship in Gastrointestinal radiology at Hospital of University of Pennsylvania. He has been listed in all the "top doctors" issue of Chicago magazine for radiology and has spoken at multiple national and international meetings and academic centers. His main research interests relate to body MR especially pancreatic and hepatobiliary imaging and oncologic imaging including assessment of response to liver-directed therapy and GU topics such as renal, adrenal, and prostate imaging. He has received a teacher of the year award from the residents and Lifetime Honored Educator award from the Radiological Society of North America honored educator awards and has trained over 150 fellows as fellowship director.

Professor Rajesh N. Keswani

Rajesh N. Keswani, MD, MS, is a gastroenterologist and nationally-recognized expert in interventional endoscopy who leads efforts to improve healthcare quality. He is the System Director of Endoscopy for Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Director of Quality for the Northwestern Medicine Digestive Health Center. Dr. Keswani earned his undergraduate and medical degrees from Boston University, finished residency training in internal medicine at Stanford University, and completed a fellowship in gastroenterology and hepatology at University of Chicago. He then pursued advanced fellowship training in interventional endoscopy at Washington University St. Louis before joining the faculty of Northwestern University in 2008. He completed a master’s degree in healthcare quality and patient safety at Northwestern in 2016. Dr. Keswani’s research focuses on novel methods to improve healthcare quality with respect to digestive health.

Professor Concetto Spampinato

Prof. Spampinato is associate member of the Machine and Hybrid Intelligence Lab. He is associate professor at University of Catania. He is a world-renowned expert in computer vision and machine learning. He has coauthored over than 200 publications in international refereed journals and conference proceedings. He is/was associate editor/guest editor of international journals such as IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Computer Vision e Image Understanding, Pattern Recognition Letters, Multimedia Systems. He is member of IEEE, CVF and IARPR. He is also ELLIS fellow. He is also one of the PIs of the PNRR project Future of Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) and member of the scientific committee of the related FAIR foundation. He is also PI of many other national and international EU projects (total funding > 10M€) dealing with AI and its applications.

Armstrong Aboah, PhD

Dr. Armstrong Aboah worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, under the guidance of Dr. Ulas Bagci. His academic journey has taken him from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he successfully earned his Ph.D. under the supervision of Yaw Adu-Gyamfi, to his current position where he leverages his extensive experience in research and development. Dr. Aboah is known for his proficiency in creating innovative database solutions, statistical models, data products, and computer vision systems, all aimed at revolutionizing transportation system management and operations.

Onkar Kishor Susladkar

Onkar Kishor Susladkar is an AI Researcher from India with four years of experience in artificial intelligence. He is currently a Research Scientist at Yellow.ai, where he leads innovative projects and collaborates with academic institutions. Onkar's expertise spans continual learning, generative modeling, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Computer Vision (CV), with a strong focus on multi-modal interactions. He is collaborating with the Machine and Hybrid Intelligence Lab at Northwestern University on cutting-edge projects, including synthetic data generation for CT/MRI images using Diffusion models and groundbreaking work in Video Diffusion. Onkar has also made significant contributions to signal processing, particularly in text-to-speech (TTS) and speech enhancement.He has published papers in top-tier journals and conferences such as the Journal of System Architecture, TPAMI, TACL, ECCV, ACL, EMNLP, ICASSP, and WACV. Driven by a passion for developing novel ideas and implementing them, Onkar is dedicated to advancing AI through continuous research and collaboration.

Xin Zhu

Xin Zhu is a dedicated Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois Chicago's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he works under the supervision of Prof. Ahmet Enis Cetin. Xin's research focus is on signal processing, with a particular emphasis on developing deep learning algorithms for data compression applications and eye tracking. He holds a joint Masters by Research degree from Xidian University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2021, he gained practical industry experience as an intern at the Samsung Research Institute.

David Wong

David Wong is an undergraduate student at Northwestern University studying biomedical engineering and computer science. His research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and medicine, with a focus on applying machine learning techniques to medical imaging for improved diagnostics. He is passionate about leveraging technology to drive innovations in the medical field, aiming to create solutions that bridge the gap between cutting-edge research and practical, impactful healthcare applications

Necip Gengeç

Necip Gengeç is a Ph.D. candidate at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), where he is supervised by Prof. Dr. Ergin Tarı. He also received his BSc (2007) and MSc (2010) degrees from ITU. Having spent significant time in the industry, Necip has honed his research focus on the application of deep learning and computer vision to multimodal data and understanding model generalization. Currently, he is collaborating with Prof. Bagci and his lab at Northwestern University as part of his Ph.D studies.

Berra Adli

Berra Adli is a summer intern from Northside College Preparatory High School in Chicago. Over the past three years, she has acquired proficiency in Python, R, and HTML/CSS through both formal education and online platforms. Berra's research project revolves around devising an AI algorithm using PyTorch and UNET to automatically detect and quantify visceral fat tissue in CT and MRI scans. Her initiative showcases a blend of her academic learnings and application in the realm of medical imaging.

Alumni

Armstrong Aboah (PostDoc), Now Assistant Professor at University of Arizona.
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).