Welcome to 13-day-old Dr. Hao’s blog! I’m excited to start sharing my thoughts and experiences in AI research, healthcare technology, and beyond. All my blogs are written without AI so bear with me on grammar errors.
What to Expect
In this blog, I’ll be writing about my random thoughts in AI Research; my prior experience working in the Healthcare AI domain in community, healthcare, and industry environments; and reflecting my Academic Life.
Reflecting my Ph.D., I am very grateful for my committee members and my amazing family. They shape who I am.
My Research Journey
I started my Ph.D. in Cornell University (yes, ithaca campus not the fancy NYC one) from August 22nd, 2022, though I actually started my research assistant after graduating from Tufts University in December 2021. I graduated from my Ph.D. in 3.5 yrs, 1231 days.
In my third year (June 2024), I received IvyPlus Exchange Ph.D. scholarship and exchanged to MIT. This exchange supposed to be 3 months. Then, it kept on extending to be 18 months. Looking back, I felt extremely fortunate.
It’s crazy to look at my boring research statement and undergraduate CV (only 2/3 page?!). I applied to Ph.D. 3 times/rounds: Fall 2019 (4 schools, none accepted), Spring 2020 (1 school, none accepted), and Fall 2020 (9 schools, 8 accepted, Duke downgraded my Ph.D. application to master…).
Cornell is my top choice and dream school, and I am super fortunate to get in. After my defense, I talked with Saleh (my committee chair), and we looked at the first cold email I sent in October 21st, 2021. My life changed from that cold email.
I will share more about my research journey. But last but not the least,my research would be impossible without my amazing academia siblings, friends, collaborators (proofs attached below).
I also went to many beautiful places within US, China, and globally: Costa Rica, Germany (twice!), Canada (twice!), Mexico, and Barbados. Most travels happened because of conferences.
Why Blog?
I love writing and talking. Maybe sometimes too talkative and loud. I always felt: “woah, this piece of thing is so exciting and I can’t wait to share with my friends.” Then I forgot.
Also, I want to share some background stories about how exciting research ideas, collaborations, career milestones are generated in the “backstage”. This version may be more interesting to read comparing to the research papers, though the papers are the synthesis of successful results. Here I hope to record the blood, sweat, tear, failures, and rejections behind it.
Stay Connected (and WHY?)
During my Ph.D., I mainly worked on applied science in AI and healthcare. My research focuses on emerging and exciting directions:
- Human-AI Interaction: Understanding how patients and clinicians interact with AI systems
- Clinical Decision Support: Building tools that help healthcare professionals make better decisions
- LLM Reverse Engineering: Exploring + evaluating how large language models work and how to improve them through data attribution
My research agenda shifts (or merges) from HCI to more fundamental AI research. I am curious to know why instead of justing using the off-the-shelf version. HCI researchers are always criticized as less technical (yes, I hear you!), but the usability study really helps to identify the true gaps between research and the actual deployment.
I’ll be posting regularly about my research, interesting papers I’m reading, conference experiences, and lessons learned along the way. Thanks for reading my ramblings.
Feel free to reach out if you have questions or want to discuss any of the topics I cover!
This is my first blog post. More exciting content coming soon!