CISE student receives the College of Engineering 2015 Societal Impact Dissertation Award
Wuyang Dai, PhD. a student of Yannis Paschalidis, received the College of Engineering 2015 Societal Impact Dissertation Award for his thesis “Detection and Prediction Problems with Applications in Personalized Health Care.”
The thesis developed algorithmic methods to support personalized preventive medicine. One of the problems addressed is the prediction of hospitalizations due to heart disease based on a patient’s Electronic Medical Record. Analyzing records of more than 45,000 Boston Medical Center patients, the new algorithms predict about 80% of hospitalizations with few false positives. Prediction enables prevention which can improve outcomes and reduce the more than $9B spent annually in the US on preventable heart-related hospitalizations.