GSU professor wins federal AI grant

Dong Hye Ye, an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Georgia State University, has received a National Science Faculty Early Career Development Award. The grant provides more than $400,000 over the next five years to fund his research project titled "Attending & Bridging Context in Vision-Language Modeling for Medical Image Analysis."

The project aims to create artificial intelligence methods that interpret medical images in conjunction with clinical text and patient data. Ye said his approach mimics how human clinicians work, who rarely view an image in isolation. Instead, they consider the patient's history, prior scans, and clinical notes. His goal is to build AI that performs the same task while remaining reliable even when that information is incomplete or noisy.

Ye noted that real clinics often deal with missing or unclear data. "This project is about building AI that does the same, and that stays reliable when that information is incomplete or noisy, as it often is in real clinics," he said. The research will focus on three specific applications: radiology reporting, eye disease, and adolescent brain development. A key outcome will be the automatic generation of radiology reports.

Ye joined Georgia State in 2022. He is a core faculty member of the Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science, a tri-institutional group. His previous work involved machine learning for medical imaging, including neuroimaging, CT image reconstruction, and microscopy. He completed his doctoral research in the Section for Biomedical Image Analysis at the University of Pennsylvania.

Todd N. Rosenstiel, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Georgia State, praised the selection. "I am delighted to see Dr. Ye receive this prestigious research award from the National Science Foundation," Rosenstiel said. He added that Ye's work reflects innovative research and a commitment to public impact.

Rosenstiel stated that advancing AI methods to help clinicians interpret medical images with greater accuracy directly contributes to improving patient care. The NSF CAREER Award recognizes early career faculty who show potential for significant contributions to research and education. The program supports faculty members as they build careers that integrate innovative research with educational excellence.

Ye expressed gratitude for the support from the National Science Foundation and his students. "I am honored to receive this award," Ye said. "I am grateful to the National Science Foundation for this support, and to my students, whose work made this possible."