{"id":10596,"date":"2026-02-18T09:05:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T14:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/?p=10596"},"modified":"2026-02-20T14:42:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:42:32","slug":"venkataraman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/2026\/02\/18\/venkataraman\/","title":{"rendered":"Explainable foundation model framework for Autism characterization from EEG signals."},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Mentors<\/h3>\n\n\t<ul class=\"profile-listing profile-format-advanced\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\n<li class=\"profile-item profile-item-advanced has-title post-9182 profile type-profile status-publish hentry departments-bme departments-ece affiliation-faculty\">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/profile\/archana-venkataraman\/\" class=\"profile-link profile-link-advanced\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<figure class=\"profile-photo profile-photo-advanced\"><img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"\/photonics-programs\/files\/2025\/11\/Archana_Venkataraman-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\t\t\t\t<h6 class=\"profile-name profile-name-advanced\">Archana Venkataraman<\/h6>\n\t\t<p class=\"profile-title profile-title-advanced\">Associate Professor (ECE, BME)<\/p>\t<\/a>\n\n\t\n<\/li>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n<li class=\"profile-item profile-item-advanced has-title post-10715 profile type-profile status-publish hentry affiliation-graduate-student\">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/profile\/deeksha-shama\/\" class=\"profile-link profile-link-advanced\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<figure class=\"profile-photo profile-photo-advanced\"><img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"\/photonics-programs\/files\/2026\/02\/deeksha_shama-crop-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/figure>\t\t\t\t<h6 class=\"profile-name profile-name-advanced\">Deeksha Shama<\/h6>\n\t\t<p class=\"profile-title profile-title-advanced\">PhD Candidate<\/p>\t<\/a>\n\n\t\n<\/li>\n\t\t\t<\/ul>\n\t\n<h3><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Project Description<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span>Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is challenging to diagnose and characterize due to its heterogeneous behavioral presentation and complex neurobiological underpinnings. Electroencephalography (EEG) has shown promise for ASD characterization by capturing atypical neural oscillations and sensory processing dynamics that may serve as objective biomarkers of underlying brain function. However, traditional EEG analysis methods that rely on manual feature extraction often suffer from poor generalizability, limited scalability, and sensitivity to noise and preprocessing choices. Alternatively, deep learning approaches offer powerful modeling capabilities for ASD classification; however they are often treated as black-box models with limited interpretability, reducing their reliability and clinical trustworthiness in healthcare settings. In this project, we will compare pretrained foundation models for classifying ASD from EEG signals and perform explainability analyses to identify discriminative features across temporal, spectral, and spatial domains at the subject, group, and longitudinal cohort levels.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Timeline<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><strong>Weeks 1-2: <\/strong><\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Literature review and familiarizing with the data.<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><strong>Weeks 3-5:<\/strong><\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> Implementing foundation model pipeline for autism classification from EEG.<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"color: #003366;\"><strong>Weeks 6-10:<\/strong><\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> Longitudinal analyses with relevant EEG features and behavioral phenotypes; Documentation and presentation.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mentors Project Description Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is challenging to diagnose and characterize due to its heterogeneous behavioral presentation and complex neurobiological underpinnings. Electroencephalography (EEG) has shown promise for ASD characterization by capturing atypical neural oscillations and sensory processing dynamics that may serve as objective biomarkers of underlying brain function. However, traditional EEG analysis methods [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19768,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19768"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10596"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10718,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596\/revisions\/10718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/photonics-programs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}