On this page
A Sneak Peak Into My Life 🔍
Welcome (back) to my bi-monthly newsletter! If you’re new here, my name is Dev and I’m an 18 year old working towards implementing unique AI solutions in the healthcare space, specifically catered towards medical imaging. September and October were full of transition and adapting to new environments; especially with starting my freshman year at the University of Toronto. This month was full of amazing experiences, ups, downs, twists, and turns; from being taken under the wing to do AI research in medical imaging at UofT to doing AI research sprints about Federated Learning to adapting to life at university and much much more! Those are just some of the many things that have happened over this past month, let’s get into the thick of it!
AI x Medical Imaging Research under Prof. Tyrell 🔬
Over these last few months, I’ve had the opportunity to work under Professor Tyrell in his AI lab. He’s taken me under his wing and I’ve been able to garner a ton of knowledge over these last couple months. Working at his lab has also helped me expand my network with PhD and graduate students working in the intersection of AI x Medical Imaging as well. On a more technical level, I've been focusing my study on how AI can be smoothly incorporated into our healthcare system to assist in the diagnosis and detection of various disorders. I’ve delved deep into various diseases, but the one I’ve been focusing most on has been Parkinson’s Disease. There are many aspects of Parkinson’s Disease that are interesting and can be tackled with the use of AI, but I’ve primarily looked at using an AI-enabled detection and assessment of Parkinson’s disease using nocturnal breathing signals. Check out the research paper I’ve been using as a basis of my research 👇
Nocturnal Breathing Signal Detection
Some Reflections:
Overall, working in this lab with students who have been doing this for a while is a humbling, but a great learning experience. It’s great to have students give you advice on what to read and what knowledge I should gather. But at the same time, sometimes it’s super humbling when they’re throwing around terms you’ve never heard of. If anything, one key takeaway I’ve had from being in this lab for a little over 2 months is that it’s vital to trust the process and consistency is key 🔑. In the current moment, I might not understand some of the topics of conversation, but to get to that point of legit-ness, it’s vital to stay consistent in work that you’re passionate about. Keeping up that consistency, whether that be 10 minutes a day or a couple hours a week, it will eventually get you to that point. Sometimes it may feel like not much progress is being made and that’s where the ‘trust the process’ portion comes in. This is something I’ve begun to actively apply to my life and I can’t wait to see where it takes me!
Federated Learning x Medical Imaging 🩺
Piggy backing off the topic of AI x medical imaging; I spent the month of September researching into a newly found domain of AI, federated learning, in medical imaging. The entire idea of Federated Learning is to protect the privacy and data of user by exploiting decentralized data and computing power.
Federated Learning is essentially decentralized machine learning
Federated Learning leverages decentralized edge devices to train algorithms while keeping the data local to each edge device. The applications of Federated Learning can be extrapolated into a multitude of different domains, but I specifically focused on medical imaging. When initially researching into medical imaging, there were many big holes that made the entire process of detecting and diagnosing extremely costly and inefficient. It blew me away how lacklustre the entire process is and with this, I broke everything down in my article.
In my article, I break down Medical Imaging; where the inefficiencies lie in the healthcare system; how Federated Learning can be integrated effectively; and the potential outcomes Check it out in my article below 😁👇
Federated Learning x Medical Imaging
Adapting to Life In University 🏫
Starting my Freshman year in University has definitely been an interesting experience to say the least. For some context, I’m currently in my Freshman year, studying computer science at the University of Toronto. I don't really know where to begin because these past few months have felt a bit like a rollercoaster. In just two months, I have experienced both my highest highs and my lowest lows. I'm relieved that I've finally gotten used to university life, but I'm also disappointed that the time has passed so quickly. Over the summer, I envisioned this smooth transition from my lifestyle in high school to what my lifestyle would eventually be in University, but I couldn’t have been more off 😅. If I was to describe my lifestyle in high school in one word, it would be simplistic. I would put in the effort to get good grades and be involved in the community. I’d have a good balance between work and life and my way of living then was very simplistic. However, that entire simplistic aspect of my life was thrown away a week into university. As a result, I’ve had to experiment a lot with how I want to live my life and consequently, I’ve come away with some important life lessons.
Life Lessons:
Adapting to life in University is harder than I’d thought it would be; the commute, the work, and keeping up a social life are all considerably more challenging than I had anticipated. Walking into my first lecture and seeing all the nervous looks on everyone’s face really reflected what I was feeling on the inside. Despite the uncertainty and nervousness, lots of experimentation helped me adapt and become accustomed to the way I want to go about university with the people and environment I’ve immersed myself in.
Takeaway #1: The Bad Doesn’t Takeaway from the Good
University has had its ups and downs, but one thing that I’ve realized is that the bad things in life don’t take away from the good. This realization came after having written my first round of midterm exams. After getting the results back, I can definitely say that University is a humbling experience. Often times, during ‘bad’ moments, we have a tendency to spiral and view life from a very negative lens. However, after my midterms, although it was a ‘bad’ moment, I realized that it’s not necessarily the end of the world, there’s so much more to life than a single bad moment. I can feel down about it, but it’s all apart of life, there are moments where you can feel on top of the world and moments where you aren’t feeling it. In other words:
There will be days where ‘bad’ things may happen, but that never takes away from the good.
And this lesson that I learnt from my university experience applies for every aspect of my life. After having internalized this lesson, I’ve become better at handling adversity and bouncing back from it!
Takeaway #2: Letting Go is the Key to Adaptation
The other important life lesson that I came away is that letting go is key in adapting, whether that be in an academic context or in a workplace setting. Immersing yourself in new environments is always difficult when you go into it with preconceived notions/expectations. Change is usually very difficult to adapt to and this was a realization I came across during my transition from high school to university. A James Clear quote that really resonated with this was:
Life is a series of seasons, and what works in one season may not work in the next.
- James Clear
This really resonated with me as I went from my high school ‘season’ to my university ‘season’. There was a lot of change and I had to let go of some habits and ways of living in order to adapt to life in University. Being afraid to let go of past habits is scary, but it’s often required when you want to start afresh in a new environment. There’s this really nice quote that sums up this life lesson perfectly:
I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep…
Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
— May Sarton
What lies ahead… 😤
That marks the end of my bi-monthly update for the months of September and October. Now that we’re at the end of my update, in typical newsletter fashion, I’m going to sign off by highlighting some things to look out for during my next newsletter 😁
Continuing my Research in Data Science x Medical Imaging under Prof. Tyrell @ UofT 🧑🏽🔬
Researching into Genomics x AI (potential project to come)
Writing in-depth & technical AI articles about recent papers and advancements ✍🏼
That’s all from me! I hope everyone’s last couple months went well. Thank you for spending time to read my newsletter and I’ll see everyone in the next edition!
If you enjoyed this, feel free to share and subscribe to my newsletter by putting your email down below 👇. Thanks for reading, I’ll see you soon!