Announcements:

1. Dr. Wei Shao Appointed Associate Editor of IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. Dr. Wei Shao has been invited to serve as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI), one of IEEE’s leading journals at the intersection of computer science, information systems, and biomedicine. In this role, Dr. Shao will oversee the peer-review process for submissions in biomedical and health informatics, contributing to the journal’s mission of advancing research in bioinformatics, imaging informatics, sensor informatics, medical informatics, and public health informatics.
2. Congratulations to Yu Xin (first-year master student), Gorkem Can Ates, and Kuang Gong! “Med3DVLM: An Efficient Vision-Language Model for 3d Medical Image Analysis” has been accepted for publication in IEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11145341
3. Dr. Muhammad Imran Appointed as Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University. Congratulations to Dr. Muhammad Imran on his new position as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor of Data Science and Analytics at Kennesaw State University. Dr. Imran completed his postdoctoral training in Dr. Wei Shao’s Lab, where he made significant contributions to AI for medical imaging. We are very proud of his accomplishments and wish him continued success in his academic career.
4. University of Florida Kidney Stone Research Team Presents Their Work at 2026 Annual R.O.C K. Society Meeting. The University of Florida Multidisciplinary Kidney Stone Research Group, which includes Abdel Alli, Niharika Bala, Vincent Bird, Nancy Denslow, William Donelan, Saeed Khan, and Rupam Ruchi, presented their most recent research findings at the 2026 Annual R.O. C. K. (Research on Calculus Kinetics) Society Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. The Study Group, composed of members of the Department of Urology and the Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology Hypertension, and Renal Transplantation, presented findings that may explain how systemic metabolic stress may contribute to kidney stone formation and recurrence. Their findings include identification of specific molecules that may be involved in stone forming processes within the kidney. This valuable information will be used in further studies targeting these specific molecules with investigation into new prevention strategies beyond current dietary and pharmacological approaches. Niharika Bala a third-year doctoral student in Abdel Alli’s lab delivered an invited platform presentation at this year’s annual R.O.C.K Society Meeting and it was well received.