UNCW Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series 2025-2026: Healthcare in the Era of Machine Learning

For the past two decades, public and private organizations have heavily invested in machine learning due to increased availability of large datasets, fueling research and discovery across disciplines, especially healthcare. This trend has been amplified with the public popularity of large language models (LLM) and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. In healthcare, machine learning has the potential to enhance predictive healthcare models, improve preventative care with real time monitoring, transform patient outcomes, facilitate drug discovery, and make healthcare more accessible and cost-effective.

This seminar series will bring a diverse range of scholars and experts, from nationally renowned doctors to applied mathematicians, from policy influencers to business founders, to embark on an enriched research journey with UNCW’s faculty and students.

Organizers

Xuemei Chen (Mathematics and Statistics), Jeeyae Choi (School of Nursing), Ahmed ElSaid (Computer Science), Karl Ricanek (Computer Science), Yang Song (Computer Science), Yishi Wang (Mathematics and Statistics)

Schedules:

- September 12th, 2025 Friday 11:30 - 12:30, @Congdon 1008 (Auditorium)

(Lunch starts at 11:00)

Title: Uncertainty Quantification in Neural Networks with Applications to MRI Processing

Radu Balan, Ph.D.

University of Maryland, College Park

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- October 3rd, 2025 Friday 12:00 - 1:00, @Congdon 1008 (Auditorium)

(Lunch starts at 11:30)

Title: Math at the Heart of Tomorrow's Medical AI

Hau-Tieng Wu, M.D., Ph.D.

New York University

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- October 31st, 2025 Friday 12:00 - 1:00, @Congdon 1008 (Auditorium)

(Lunch starts at 11:30)

Title: Artificial intelligence in healthcare and life sciences: opportunities and challenges - Based on an AI practitioner's personal journey

Zheng Yang, Ph.D.

Amazon Web Services

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- January 26th, 2026 Monday 4:00 - 5:00, @Congdon 1008 (Auditorium)

(Pizza at 3:30)

Title: Designing Technology for Real Life: Ecological Validity and Quality of Life in Chronic Conditions

Hee Tae Jung, Ph.D.

Indiana University Indianapolis

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Sep 12th, Balan Bio

Dr. Balan is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Maryland. He is currently the program director of Applied Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computing program. Dr. Balan has extensive research in the theory of application of neural network and deep learning. He is Co-editor in chief of Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, a top journal in applied mathematics. Before joining Maryland, Dr. Balan was a senior research scientist at Siemens. He obtained a PhD in Computational and Applied Mathematics at Princeton University in 1998.

Abstract

In this talk we study Lipschitz properties of neural networks. In practical numerical examples (such as Alex Net, and scattering networks), estimations of local Lipschitz bounds are compared to these theoretical bounds. Based on the Lipschitz bounds, we next establish concentration inequalities for the output distribution with respect to a stationary random input signal. Such a Lipschitz analysis is next applied to medical image processing. Image reconstructions involving neural networks (NNs) are generally non-iterative and computationally efficient. However, without analytical expression describing the reconstruction process, the computation of noise propagation becomes difficult. Automated differentiation allows rapid computation of derivatives without an analytical expression. In this talk, the feasibility of computing noise propagation with automated differentiation was investigated. The noise propagation of image reconstruction by End-to-end variational-neural-network was estimated using automated differentiation and compared with Monte-Carlo simulation. The root-mean-square error (RMSE) map showed great agreement between automated differentiation and Monte-Carlo simulation over a wide range of SNRs.

October 3rd, Wu Bio

Dr. Wu received his PhD in Mathematics from Princeton University in 2011, under the supervision of Professor Ingrid Daubechies (and unofficially Professor Amit Singer). Following his postdoctoral research position from 2011 to 2014, Dr. Wu joined the University of Toronto's Department of Mathematics as a tenure-track Assistant Professor until June 2017. From there, he transitioned to Duke University, initially as a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Department of Statistical Science (from June 2017 to July 2022) and later as a tenured Professor (from August 2022 to August 2023). In August 2023, he joined New York University as a tenured Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Before coming to mathematics, Dr. Wu received his medical degree from National Yang Ming University (now National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University), Taiwan, in 2003. Following his medical studies, he practiced as a resident doctor at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan. In 2015, Dr. Wu was awarded the Sloan Research Fellowship. In 2017, he was awarded the PIMS Early Career Award by the Canadian Applied and Industrial Society (CAIMS). His research interests encompass a broad spectrum, spanning mathematics, statistics, biomedical engineering, and medicine, with a particular emphasis on biomedical signal processing, theoretical advancements, and their clinical applications and unmet requirements. Dr. Wu has coauthored over 100 journal publications and 10 conference proceedings. Furthermore, he serves as an associate editor for journals including Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, Information and Inference: A Journal of the IMA, and Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics.

Abstract

The rise of wearable sensors and bedside devices has transformed health monitoring from isolated snapshots into continuous streams of rich, multimodal physiological data. Yet these signals are highly nonstationary, making it difficult to extract reliable, clinically useful information. Current deep learning-based AI systems often fall short: they can be powerful but remain opaque, fragile, and disconnected from science/physiology. Mathematics offers a path forward. By grounding AI in mathematical principles, we can rigorously handle dynamic data, ensure interpretability, and uncover physiological meaning. In this talk, I will show how mathematics, which IMHO is at the heart of tomorrow's medical AI, can transform raw biomedical signals into trustworthy insights, paving the way toward reliable, science-based care.

October 31st, Yang Bio

Zheng has been with AWS for 4 years, and brings more than 25 years of AI/ML experience. Before AWS, Zheng was a senior global executive at Boehringer Ingelheim, responsible for the strategy and execution of global data and tech innovation for human pharma business, from discovery, clinical, medical affairs, to commercial excellence. He was the mastermind of the Boehringer holistic data ecosystem “DataLand” to accelerate the launch of New Medicines.
Before Boehringer, Zheng was a productive drug hunter, high performance computing (HPC) thought leader, and prolific mentor at GlaxoSmithKline. He co-discovered an antibiotic Gepotidacin for the US Dept. of Defense, featured on CNN Health. He was responsible for 90% of GSK HPC, and co-founded the Cross Pharma HPC Forum in 2007. Zheng and the Cross Pharma HPC Forum first introduced AWS Cloud to global pharma scientific computing community in 2012. He trained many postdoctoral researchers, and one of them co-discovered Paxlovid against COVID.
On the personal side, Zheng grew up in Shanghai as a city boy, and got the best education there. In 1997 Zheng went to Univ. of Calif. to pursue the PhD with Prof. W. Todd Wipke, the co-founder of Computer Chemistry. Wipke’s Computer-Aided Retro Synthesis research won the Nobel Prize, Chemistry, 1990. Zheng has lived in US since.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful and disruptive tool, with the potential to fundamentally transform Healthcare and Life Sciences industries. In this presentation, I will outline recent AI breakthroughs in healthcare and life sciences, how effective, reliable and compliant AI systems can steer the future directions of AI enabled healthcare systems, and drug discovery and development to improve patients' lives. I will share my learnings through my almost 30 years of practice of AI throughout the pharmaceutical value chain.

January 26th, 2026, Jung Bio

Dr. Jung is an Assistant Professor at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Indianapolis. His research focuses on developing novel technologies to support the quality of life of people with chronic conditions and validating its intended benefits. His current research studies are generously supported by the Alzheimer’s Association and the Indiana State Department of Health. His work has been recognized with a Best Paper Award at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2024, a featured article in the IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering (TNSRE) 2020, a cover article in the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (JBHI) 2019, and selection as an Innovation Award Honoree at CES 2020. Dr. Jung routinely serves as an Associate Editor for the Biomedical Sensors and Wearable Systems Track of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC). He also regularly serves on the Technical Program Committees of the IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Body Sensor Networks (BSN) and the ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI). In addition, he serves as a reviewer on panels for the Alzheimer’s Association, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Abstract

There is a growing interest in developing technology to support daily activities, communication, and rehabilitation for people with chronic conditions. However, many existing technologies are designed and evaluated under simplified or controlled conditions that do not fully reflect how people function in everyday life; as a result, systems that appear effective in laboratory or clinical settings often struggle to deliver meaningful improvements in quality of life when deployed in real-world contexts, despite recent advances in immersive virtual reality and AI that hold promise for supporting everyday functioning. Addressing these challenges requires systematic, in-depth, and community-based research that engages individuals with chronic conditions, caregivers, and clinicians throughout the research process. In this talk, I present my ongoing work that advances this approach and highlight why ecological validity should be treated as a central design principle when developing technologies intended for real-world use.