Marzyeh Ghassemi facts for kids

Marzyeh Ghassemi is a brilliant professor at MIT, a famous university in the United States. She leads a special lab called the Healthy ML lab. In this lab, she and her team create smart computer programs, known as machine learning algorithms. These programs help doctors make better choices about people's health.

Professor Ghassemi used to be a professor at the University of Toronto in Canada. There, she was a leader in using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for health.

Marzyeh Ghassemi's Journey in Science

Early Education and Discoveries

Marzyeh Ghassemi studied computer science and electrical engineering at New Mexico State University. She then earned a master's degree in biomedical engineering from Oxford University in England. Later, she completed her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

During her PhD, Marzyeh worked with doctors at a hospital called Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She saw how much health information was available. She then created computer programs that could look at all this information. These programs could help predict things like how long a patient might stay in the hospital. They could also suggest if a patient needed extra help, like a blood transfusion.

In 2012, Marzyeh was part of a team called Sana AudioPulse. They won an award for making a phone app that could check for hearing problems from far away. She also led a study that used smart wearable devices, like fitness trackers. These devices collected data that helped tell the difference between people with a voice problem called muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) and those without it. After finishing her PhD, Marzyeh worked as a visiting researcher at Alphabet’s Verily and as a researcher at MIT.

Leading AI for Health in Canada

In 2018, Marzyeh Ghassemi joined the University of Toronto. She became a professor in both the Computer Science Department and the Faculty of Medicine. This was a big deal because she was the first person hired for both computer science and medicine at the university. Her lab was called the Machine Learning for Health (ML4H) lab. She also worked at the Vector Institute, which is a leading AI research center. She held an important position as a Canada CIFAR Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chair. In 2019, she was also named a Canada Research Chair in machine learning for health.

Return to MIT and Major Awards

In 2021, Professor Ghassemi returned to MIT as a professor. She teaches in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and also at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

Marzyeh Ghassemi has received many important awards for her work. She won a National Science Foundation CAREER award. Her research has been recognized by many other scientists, with her work being cited over 13,000 times. During her PhD, she was named one of the "35 Innovators Under 35" by MIT Technology Review magazine. Before her PhD, she also received the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and the Marshall Scholarship, which are very competitive awards for bright students.