Beginning bright and early at 8:30am on January 31st, the University of Delaware’s Computer and Information Science department commenced its first annual AI4Health Day event. The day-long conference, led by co-chairs Ilya Safro and Xi Peng, featured talks and presentations from local industry leaders, UD faculty members, and even CIS students in a display of hard work and achievements within the AI field.
Kicking off the conference was a social networking breakfast, where students, faculty, and invited guests from local companies could talk about AI and what the day might bring. After that half-hour, opening statements began. Department chair Dr. Weisong Shi was first at bat, introducing the event and speaking on behalf of the whole department. He was followed by the director and associate directors of the UD Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CBCB), Dr. Cathy Wu and Dr. Shawn Polson, respectively. Finally, UD Bioscience Association member Nicole Merli took the stage before giving way to local industry members.
The University of Delaware then welcomed local health workers, offering a well-rounded conference that explored AI usage in every corner of the healthcare field. The first to speak was Dr. Aziz Nazha of Incyte Pharma, followed in suit by Dr. Devanshu Verma from Christiana Care, Ashley Respress and William Rollins from Acellus Health, and Dr. Xiaopeng Zhao from the University of Tennessee.
Event co-chair Dr. Xi Peng expressed a positive surprise that came from the industry speakers, mentioning their willingness to embrace AI technology in their work. Public opinion on AI usage is very divided and largely skeptical, but its progressive integration into the health field represents a turning point. When AI can be trusted by professionals who bear the weight of protecting public health, it can begin to be trusted in the eyes of the general public, too. “[Field professionals] may think AI is just some concept…. They may use GPT to help them to do some writing, but probably they won’t use GPT for the problem. But, actually, I found many people in the domain already include AI in their workflow,” Peng said. “The acceptance of AI is beyond my expectation.”
After these talks from industry professionals, lunch was served and posters from UD graduate students studying AI were presented. UD’s graduate programs in Computer Science and Engineering are very well ranked according to the US News and World Report. The participants in these programs are excellent, thoughtful students with incredible dedication, and their posters during AI4Health Day were indicative of this. These students, guided by the mentorship of UD’s professors, are the future of the CIS and AI industries. They are TAs, lab workers, co-writers of research papers, and more. This event was an important source of connection between the students and the industry members, allowing them to create necessary relationships with today’s professionals.
After the students took the spotlight, they passed it back to the UD faculty members currently working in the AI fields. From 1:30 to 4pm, UD’s Dr. Austin Brockmeier, Dr. Sunita Chandrasekaran, Dr, Ulf Schiller, Dr. Rahmat Beheshti, Dr. Yixiang Deng, Dr. Keith Decker, Dr. Ilya Safro, and Dr. Xi Peng. These professors are forward-thinking members of the CIS department, leaders to one another as well as leaders to their students. They are recipients of National Science Foundation (NSF) grants for their work in various sectors of CIS, like Peng’s research on autonomous vehicles, Safro’s investigation of quantum computing, or Chandrasekaran’s work on software engineering access. This is a truly refined group of individuals, and each one took the stage to discuss their current projects further, within the specific context of AI usage.
Following these talks was time carved out for students and professors to talk more with the industry professionals, as well as a dinner. The day concluded at 7pm. It was a massive success for the department, helping bring individuals together in a positive discussion and tackling one of the most contended issues in modern science and computing in a productive way.
In the future, Peng hopes that this event can become a recurring one, with even more interaction between participants. “Maybe [in the future], we can divide people into subgroups to have discussions based on different topics,” he suggested. It could add an even more productive aspect to an already fantastic event, helping people get even more engaged by facilitating active conversation. He believes, too, that the event could even grow beyond the exploration of AI in just the health industry. It has the potential to grow year by year, expanding into other general public industries like finance. “If this is successful, we can even connect with people from California, not just UD or New Jersey,” Peng said.
This event is just one of many that the UD CIS department facilitates each year. It is part of a greater effort to ensure that students can have a well-rounded education by facilitating real-world connections and experiences. AI4Health Day is a truly excellent event, exemplifying the mission of the department in “educating future leaders in academia, industry, government, and entrepreneurial pursuits through rigorous programs covering the theory and application of computer science.”