Al-Empower Monitoring and Intervention of Neurodegenerative Diseases in Community Settings by Dr Zeng Zhiwei

This in-person seminar on interdisciplinary research titled “Al-Empower Monitoring and Intervention of Neurodegenerative Discases in Community Settings” with Dr Zeng Zhiwei was jointly organised by IAS NTU and the Graduate Students' Clubs of SCSE and SPMS on 7 March 2023 at the ABN Seminar Room 1.  

Dr Zeng is Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the Joint NTU-University of British Columbia Research Centre of Excellence in Active Living for the Elderly (LILY). Her  research interests include explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), argumentation-based decision-making, and the application of XAI in the assessment and intervention of neurodegenerative diseases and other medical scenarios. 

Rapidly aging populations have become a global phenomenon and the long-term care landscape is evolving rapidly. The Singapore way has been to look to the family and community first to allow people to "age in place" in the familiarity of their own homes. More help facilities, schemes, and programs are also appearing. Among the various care services - ranging from personal and medical to palliative care - more attention has been paid to both ends of the care spectrum. However, care at the community level has received much less attention. 

Dr Zeng sharing her talk on the interesting applications of AI in healthcare.

In this seminar, Dr Zeng discussed their team's efforts to bring more accessible and personalised long-term medical care to the community level using AI. She showcased her research on developing AI based tools for filtering individuals at a high risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases and she also presented data which showed the effectiveness of her developed tools. Their projects on monitoring and intervening in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Dementia and Parkinson's, help illustrate the potential of AI in leading a paradigm shift in current protocols. 

Dr Zeng also shared with the students the importance of interdisciplinary research. She believed that interdisciplinary research approach could nurture research with more real-world impact. She also provided concrete suggestions on how to conduct interdisciplinary research by collaborating with researchers from diverse background. For example, she suggested that each researcher should have his/her expertise in an interdisciplinary research team and not attempt to master everything by himself/herself. These suggestions were very insightful and were widely accepted by the audience.  

“The entire presentation flow was very clear and the speaker is very knowledgeable. The entire seminar is very enjoyable and informative” - Lee Cheng Kang Darren (Undergraduate, CCEB)

Written by: Cao Zhiwei (SCSE GSC) and Indrajit (SPMS GSC)