The two-day event, held under the theme “MedAI Hack Collaborative: Unlocking Precision Health with AI,” was co-sponsored by Dr. Javaid Sheikh, Dean of WCM-Q, and Dr. Curtis Cole, Cornell’s Global Chief Information Officer. The initiative marked a key milestone in WCM-Q’s mission to bridge medicine, data science, and technology through interdisciplinary collaboration.
Six Teams, Six Health Challenges
Six interdisciplinary teams tackled diverse medical problems, applying AI to:
- Federated learning for clinical risk prediction
- Target trial emulation using real-world data
- Tumor subtype prediction in breast cancer
- Automatic polycystic ovarian morphology classification
- Early prediction of postpartum depression
- Wearable and synthetic data analysis for predictive health insights
Guided by faculty and mentors from Cornell and WCM-Q, participants merged technical innovation with clinical expertise.
Collaboration Across Borders
Dean Sheikh emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary learning:
“Initiatives that unite diverse academic disciplines and regions represent the best opportunity to creatively apply new technologies to improve health care outcomes.”
Dr. Cole described the event as a “profound experience” for students to explore the intersection of computing and medicine, while Ayham Boucher, head of AI innovations for Cornell IT and a member of the organizing committee, praised the “seamless collaboration” between students in New York and Qatar.
Winning Solution
The team “Federated Nomads” won the top prize for their work on federated learning for clinical risk prediction, recognized for its creativity and potential to transform health care delivery.
Team members included Mahmoud Yousef, Kareem Ali, Aqib Abdul Rahman, Mohammed Abdulla (WCM-Q), and Vignesh Rangarajan and Yann Hicke (Cornell).
Students described the hackathon as an eye-opening experience that deepened their understanding of how AI and medicine converge to enhance precision health.
By connecting future physicians and technologists, the WCM-Q AI Hackathon laid the foundation for a new generation of interdisciplinary innovators shaping the future of health care.
