Dr. Alam awarded NIH-NEI Grant on Federated Learning for Ophthalmic Diagnostics

Dr. Minhaj Nur Alam, Assistant Professor of ECE, has been recently awarded funding from the National Eye Institute (NEI) at the National Institute of Health (NIH) for the project “Domain-adaptive federated learning to develop machine learning models for predicting incident and progression of geographic atrophy”.

This grant will help Dr. Alam and his clinical collaborators (Wake Forest, Illinois Health, and Stanford) to develop novel federated learning approaches for the prediction of geographic atrophy which is an advanced form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is one of the leading causes of severe vision loss. Clinical deployment of advanced AI prediction tools will facilitate the identification of high-risk AMD patients as candidates for more frequent screening and earlier treatment, leading to better clinical outcomes.
This project also focuses on expanding biomedical imaging and AI research at UNC Charlotte by integrating research outcomes within the ECE curriculum. Dr. Alam teaches ‘AI for Biomedical Applications’ which discusses more on this topic.

For further reading, please see the following:
https://coefs.charlotte.edu/malam8/research/

For more details on the grant:
https://reporter.nih.gov/search/FZGBu1iIIECuwgID-0d3IA/project-details/10889689