The first student from the Department of Heath Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics to win an International Student Achievement Award was honored on November 19 by the University of Florida International Center. Master’s student Aman Pathak, who came to UF from India, was one of five UF students named as an Outstanding Masters and Professional International Student.
Pathak shared an email of appreciation: “I would like to extend a special thanks to you, Dr. Yonghui Wu. Your belief in my potential has been pivotal to my growth and success since June 2022. Your unwavering support in every way I could imagine has been instrumental in making this award possible. I am deeply grateful and wholeheartedly dedicate this recognition to you.”
Within the past two years, Pathak has been published as a co-author in the journal Nature and as the lead author in the proceedings of the 2024 American Medical Informatics Association.
Awards were also given to 10 outstanding doctoral and undergraduate students. The $1500 prize honors the excellence of distinguished students who represent global citizenship and local advancement of UF’s mission.
Graduating Soon
Pathak recently defended his capstone project and will be graduating in December with an M.S. degree in Medical Science with a concentration in Biomedical Informatics. His project’s title was: “Normalizing and Refining the Extracted Thyroid Nodule Characteristics from Ultrasound Reports.” His supervisory committee included Yonghui Wu, Ph.D., and Jie Xu, Ph.D.
The capstone project used natural language processing, a cornerstone of artificial intelligence, to enhance cancer information extracted from ultrasound reports. It builds upon his previous research mentored by HOBI’s Wu and Singh Ospina, M.D., an associate professor in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, to improve models based on thyroid measurement standards. This process allows large-scale studies to explore the links between thyroid nodules and thyroid cancer overdiagnosis, and ultimately improve patient outcomes.
Pathak wrote about this research: “Thank you, Dr. Singh Ospina, for being such a humble, supportive, and inspiring mentor. Your dedication to advancing thyroid cancer management and supporting young researchers like me is truly admirable. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to learn from you and to contribute, in some small way, to the groundbreaking work we have pursued together.”
More Gratitude
Pathak has been a very appreciative student as well as a volunteer photographer and communicator for HOBI. “I also want to thank everyone in the HOBI department for fostering such a collaborative and research-inspiring environment. Being part of this department has always motivated me to strive for excellence, and it has been a privilege to work alongside many dedicated colleagues with whom this achievement would not have been possible,” Pathak wrote.
After graduation, Pathak is planning to use his data and computing expertise in the health care industry.