NSF - NIH Smart Health Workshop 2022

Date: October 6-7, 2022

Theme: "Smart Health Through the Life Course"

The Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institute of Health (NIH) at Wright State University’s Data Science for Healthcare Laboratory (DASH) and CASAS at Washington State University are hosting a virtual Smart and Connected Health Principal Investigator Meeting on October 6 and 7, 2022. The meeting is scheduled to discuss and promote advances in smart health research and foster partnerships for the future of smart health. The workshop’s focus will be on “Smart Health through the Life Course” and will include a diverse group of researchers, including but not limited to current and aspiring NSF and NIH SCH PIs, students, senior personnel, industry partners, as well as program officers from NSF and NIH. The meeting will allow attendees to foster new collaborations, provide access to new and existing resources, as well as allow researchers to share cutting-edge technology and models for conceptualizing research within the smart health domain.

Registration and Applications

Workshop Organizing Committee

Student Support Team

  • Swati Padhee (Wright State University)

  • Ankita Agarwal (Wright State University)

  • James Hamilton (Wright State University)

  • K M Tawsik Jawad (Wright State University)

Meeting Agenda** Updated!

  • The presentation order for the lightning talk on both days is shown here.

  • The times referenced are in EST.

  • The lightning talks will be presented by the 2021 SCH PIs and student awardees.

  • The links to access the workshop and Mozilla Hub will be shared with the participants via email.



Thursday, October 6, 2022


11:00 – 11:30 AM Opening remarks

11:30 – 12:15 PM Keynote I: Dr. James Rehg, Georgia Institute of Technology
 “Seeing” and responding to autism in infants and toddlers


12:15 – 1:00 PM Expert panel I: Smart Health in Infancy / Childhood / Adolescence

  • Challenges of doing novel data science during development - Dr. Sarah Ostadabbas, Northeastern University

  • The role of parents and caregivers - Dr. Katie Seik, Indiana University

  • Data sparsity and biocompatibility - Dr. Herbert Tanner, University of Delaware

  • Supporting science while maintaining privacy sensitivity - Dr. Li Xiong, Emory University


1:00 – 1:15 PM Break


1:15 – 2:15 PM Breakout/mini workshops I

  • Aspiring PI: Michael Espey, NIH, Fenglou Mao, NIH and Balakrishnan Prabhakaran, NSF

  • Establishing ground truth and minimum viable assessment: Dana Wolff-Hughes, NIH and Laurel Kuxhaus, NSF

  • Enhancing Sensing through AI: Qi Duan, NIH and Wendy Nilsen, NSF

  • Cyber-Physical Systems in health- Can we automate health?: Christopher Hartshorn, NIH and Sylvia Spengler, NSF

  • New Methods to determine causality: Susan Wright, NIH and Wei Ding, NSF

  • Next generation smart health robotics: Moria Bittman, NIH and Juan Wachs, NSF


2:15 – 2:45 PM Breakout/workshop I reports


2:45 – 3:30 PM Lightning talks I - 2021 grantees

  • Shigang Chen, Maggie Makar, Carol Espy-Wilson, Thomas Strohmer, Jenna Wiens, Hong Yu

  • Juejun Hu, Jian Kang, Hyunglae Lee, Russell Pesavento, Nitin Sharma, Guo-Qiang Zhang, Xiaopeng Zhao

  • Aly Farag, Meltem Izzetoglu, Anne Ngu, Truong Nguyen, My Thai, Rene Vidal, Shandong Wu

  • James Dieffenderfer, David Paydarfar, Asif Salekin, Cyrus Shahabi, Yong Zhu, Arjun Athreya



3:30 – 4:30 PM Birds of a feather sessions

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Friday, October 7, 2022


11:00 – 11:45 AM Expert panel II: Smart Health in Older Adulthood


  • Naturalistic tech-driven longitudinal assessment - Dr. Deepak Ganesan, University of Massachusetts Amherst

  • Issues in aging technology: Designing for accessibility and usability - Dr. Beth Mynatt, Northeastern University

  • Challenges, commonalities, and uniqueness across life stages - Dr. Fay Cobb Payton, North Carolina State University

  • Including, understanding, and modeling cultural differences - Dr. Maria Brunette, The Ohio State University


11:45 – 12:45 PM Understanding the Food and Drug Administration in Smart Health

  • Dorn Carranza, PhD, MBA

  • Ed Margerrison, PhD


12:45 – 1:00 PM Break


1:00 – 2:00 PM Lightning talks II - Students & 2021 Smart Health PIs

2021 Smart Health PIs

  • Michael Fu, Dimitrios Samaras, Edison Thomaz, Xiang Zhong, Laurent Younes , Min Wu, Kwan-Liu Ma, Mounya Elhilali, Tieming Liu

Student Awardees

  • Ritika Menghani, Masud Rabbani, Mohamed Zaid

  • Sayma Akther, Jianyuan Ni, Zhiyuan Wang, Huining Li, Arash Hajisafi, Shehjar Sadhu

  • Tricia Aung, Rochana Chaturvedi, Navid Seidi, James Spann, Zhuoning Yuan, Lu Wang

  • Mahdieh Nejati, Fengpei Yuan, Abigale Plunk



2:00 – 2:45 PM Keynote II: Maureen Schmitter-Edgecombe, Washington State University

Enhancing Assessment and Intervention Methods for Aging Brain Health with Technology

2:45 – 4:00 PM Government funding panel - Who does what, Next steps SBIR/STTR, Training

Balakrishnan Prabhakaran, Wendy Nilsen, Dana Wolff Hughes

4:00 – 4:15 PM Closing remarks

Balakrishnan Prabhakaran, NSF; Dana Wolf-Hughes, NCI