Eric W
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at Stanford University
Expertise
Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models, Building AI apps and agents
Bio
Hello! I’m a fifth-year PhD student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where I research AI applications in healthcare. My work focuses on developing and evaluating deep learning models for medicine. I’m also passionate about mentoring students in AI and helping them explore research opportunities. Outside of my work, I enjoy spending time with my wife and our baby daughter. We love being outdoors—whether it’s running, hiking, or just enjoying nature.Project ideas
Using AI to Identify Pneumonia from X-Ray Images
Before beginning my PhD, I helped start a medical AI startup focused on detecting cancer in X-ray images. In this project, you’ll explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can help doctors diagnose pneumonia using chest X-ray images. You’ll learn about how computers “see” medical images, how machine learning models can recognize patterns, and how AI can support doctors in making faster and more accurate diagnoses. To start, you’ll gather a dataset of X-ray images that include cases of pneumonia and healthy lungs (public datasets are available). You’ll then use a simple machine learning model, like a convolutional neural network (CNN), to train an AI to distinguish between pneumonia and healthy lungs. No prior coding experience is required—you’ll follow guided tutorials to understand the basics of AI, Python, and image analysis. By the end of the project, you’ll create a mini research paper summarizing your findings. If you’re interested, you can also experiment with improving your model or visualizing how AI makes its decisions. This project gives you a hands-on introduction to AI in medicine and a great foundation for future research!