Georgia Tourassi facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Gina Tourassi
Tourassi at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2017
Born	Georgia D. Tourassi Greece
Alma mater	Duke University (PhD) Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (BSc)
Scientific career
Fields	Biomedical informatics Computer-aided diagnosis Artificial intelligence
Institutions	Duke University Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Thesis	Artificial neural networks for image analysis and diagnosis in nuclear medicine (1993)

Georgia "Gina" D. Tourassi is a leading scientist who helps doctors use computers to understand health information better. She is the Director of the Health Data Sciences Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She also teaches as a professor at Duke University. Her work focuses on using artificial intelligence (AI) and data science to improve healthcare.

Early Life and Education

Gina Tourassi grew up in Greece. She studied physics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, finishing her degree in 1987. After that, she moved to the United States. She continued her studies at Duke University, where she earned her PhD in 1993.

Research and Career

After her studies, Dr. Tourassi became a research assistant at Duke University. She later became a professor of medical physics there. Her research often involved using very large amounts of health data, sometimes called big data. She focused on understanding diseases like cancer better.

Using AI to Help Doctors

Dr. Tourassi has done important work using artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine. She developed special computer systems to help doctors. These systems are called computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) tools. For example, she created CAD systems to help find breast cancer early during screenings.

Her CAD systems are smart. They can look through many medical images, like X-rays. They help doctors find important clues that might show signs of cancer. She also created ways to check how reliable these computer tools are.

Work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

In 2011, Dr. Tourassi joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This is a big research center. She became the first Director of the Health Data Sciences Institute there. In this role, she guides research in biomedical science and computing.

At Oak Ridge, she uses powerful supercomputers, like the Titan. These computers help her use deep learning to analyze huge amounts of information from cancer reports. Her goal is to create automated tools. These tools can quickly find important information that helps researchers and doctors understand cancer better. She believes these tools can help find new ways to fight cancer.

Developing New Data Tools

Dr. Tourassi has also developed other helpful computer tools. One is called iCrawl. It's a special web crawler that collects health information from the internet for research.

Another important tool she helped create is called ORiGAMI (Oak Ridge Graph Analytics for Medical Innovation). This tool helps doctors and researchers explore medical literature. It can find connections between different pieces of information, similar to how Netflix suggests movies you might like. This helps scientists discover new things about diseases and treatments.

Supporting Future Scientists

Dr. Tourassi is a strong supporter of women and minority groups in science and engineering. She helps with mentorship programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She wants to encourage more diverse people to join the science field.

Awards and Honours

Dr. Tourassi has received many awards for her important work:

• 2015: Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
• 2015: Fellow of American Association of Physicists in Medicine
• 2016: United States Department of Energy Secretary's Appreciation Award
• 2017: HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Award
• 2017: Fellow of the SPIE
• 2018: Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director's Award
• 2018: Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distinguished Researcher award
• 2019: Co-Chair of the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference
• 2020: Chair of the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference