Tesfamariam Mulugeta Abuhay, MSc, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Medicine, Division of Academic Internal Medicine and Geriatrics
Email:
About
Dr. Tesfamariam Mulugeta Abuhay is an Assistant Professor in the AI.Health4All Center for Health Equity using ML/AI and the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Illinois, Chicago. As a black person who was born and raised in Africa and has witnessed the consequences of poor healthcare, his research primarily focuses on improving the quality, efficiency, equality, and equity of healthcare using machine learning, simulation, and social network analysis. Tesfa has explored the applications of ML, including LLMs, to address pressing societal problems in healthcare, such as women’s and children’s health, gender violence, emergency care, online safety, and food security. He has also proposed integrating machine learning with simulation to accurately represent and mimic patient flow to and within a hospital. Additionally, he has developed a novel NLP-based research metrics and analysis approach that helps study, understand, and measure the influence and impact of research and innovation ideas. His research, which aims at developing LLMs for sexual, reproductive, and maternal health and rights in low-resource languages, was selected as the best paper by the 12th IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics, ALL4HEALTH WORKSHOP.
In the past, Tesfa worked as an Assistant Professor and Vice Dean of the College of Informatics at the University of Gondar in Gondar, his hometown in Ethiopia and as a Research Engineer at ITMO University in Saint Peterburg, Russia. He has also won grants as a PI and Co-PI to improve emergency care, address online safety issues, enhance the capacity of Ethiopian higher education institutions in health data science, and assess the impact of COVID-19 on mental health patients.
Tesfa completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship in AI and Analytics at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Canada and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering at ITMO University, Russia.
Grants:
PI: Enhancing Emergency Health Care using Machine Learning and Simulation, The World Academy of Science.
PI: Improving Online Safety of Female High School Students, Impact Amplifier and Google.
Best-Paper Award:
12th IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics, ALL4HEALTH WORKSHOP
Education
Post-Doctoral Fellow in AI and Analytics: Smith School of Business at Queen's University, Canada
PhD in Computer Science and Engineering: ITMO University, Russia