PhD student recognized for poster of distinction award
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Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering third-year PhD student Tina Khajeh was recently recognized with a poster of distinction for the upcoming American Pancreatic Association, Japan Pancreas Society, Chinese Association of Pancreatology, and the International Association of Pancreatology (APA/JPS/CAP/IAP) joint meeting.
Her research entitled “Machine Learning Model Combining Diet, Microbiome, Clinical, and Metabolome Data Achieves Superior Predictive Ability in Acute Pancreatitis” focuses on addressing the gap between diet, gut microbiome, clinical and metabolite data integration into machine learning for predicting acute pancreatitis risk.
Khajeh is working under BME Professor Yang Dai. Dai is also the director of the graduate studies for the Bioinformatics Program in the BME department. The two worked on this research project in collaboration with Dr. Cemal Yazici, an associate professor in the Department of Medicine Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
“Dai introduced me to the opportunity to explore acute pancreatitis using a comprehensive set of microbiome, metabolome, diet, and clinical data,” Khajeh said. “Only the top-scoring research is recognized as a poster of distinction, and the review committee expressed that they were particularly impressed with our work. As a PhD student, this recognition is incredibly motivating and validates the hard work we’ve invested in our research.”
She added that as a PhD student in bioinformatics with a background in computer science, it’s especially satisfying that her research received this recognition at the prestigious annual meeting in pancreatology, which hosts leading scientists of this field from around the world each year.
Khajeh previously earned a bachelor’s in computer engineering from Shiraz University and a master’s in artificial intelligence from Sharif University of Technology, both in Iran.
The dataset used in Khajeh’s abstract submission originated from an acute pancreatitis study titled “The Role of Diet and gut microbiome in acute pancreatitis and health-disparities.”
The clinical cohort was developed by Yazici as part of his Career Development Award as a CCTS KL2 Scholar, and the main findings from this study were recently published by Yazici et al., Clinical Translational Gastroenterology Journal, 2023. This project also played a key role in Drs. Yazici and UIC Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism Chief and Endocrinologist at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center Brian Layden to obtain funding to co-lead NIDDK-supported Chicago Clinical Center for Type 1 Diabetes in Acute Pancreatitis Consortium in a U01 mechanism.