Incorporating Social and Behavioural Determinants of Health into Outcome Research Using Machine Learning
This research leverages structured and free-text data in electronic health records to develop natural language processing and machine learning models that will help develop outcome prediction models and tailored interventions in our health system.
Lead: Zahra Shakeri
Dr. Zahra Shakeri is the NSERC Tier II Canada Research Chair in Precision Public Health and Health Informatics and an Assistant Professor of Health Informatics and Information Visualization at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She holds cross-appointments with the Faculty of Information and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, University of Toronto.
In 2022 Dr. Shakeri founded the Health Informatics, Visualization, and Equity (HIVE) Lab, which develops responsible artificial intelligence for public health, clinical decision support, and data-driven storytelling that advances health equity. Her research program integrates natural language processing, information visualization, AI safety, causal inference, and social media analytics to create patient-centred digital health solutions. Dr. Shakeri earned her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Calgary and completed postdoctoral training in the Gehlenborg Lab, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School.
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Sepehr Harfi Moridani
MSc Graduate Student
Thesis: Reference Free Voice Conversion for Post Surgical Speech Using Self-supervised Disentangled Learning
Supervisors: Zahra Shakeri
Omid Jafarinezhad
PhD Graduate Student
Thesis: Fedlify: A Federated Learning Platform for Health AI
Supervisors: Zahra Shakeri
Kamyar Kazari
MSc Graduate Student
Thesis: Hybrid LLM Generation of Synthetic Gamling Logs
Supervisors: Zahra Shakeri
Guan Wang
PhD Graduate Student
Thesis: From Identification to Intervention: Data-Enabled Homelessness Prevention, Care Pathways, and Equitable Urban Policy
Supervisors: Zahra Shakeri
Zhenxiao Yang
MSc Graduate Student
Thesis: Detecting Communication Barriers in Hospitalized Patients: Severity Grading from Unstructured Clinical Notes Using NLP and Large Language Models
Supervisors: Zahra Shakeri