Menglin Zhao

I am Menglin (Gigi) Zhao, a PhD student in the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University, working in the Human-Centered AI Lab with Professor Dakuo Wang. I study human-centered multimodel AI systems that help doctors and patients.

That goal draws me into the three moments that matter most to patients. It starts inside the clinic, in the rush of emergency care, where I look at how patients and providers communicate under pressure. From there I follow patients through the uneasy trip home from the hospital, studying how care can be handed off smoothly between the clinic and the home. And once they are home, I stay with them through the long stretch of self-care that follows, using wearables and conversational agents to monitor how they are doing from a distance.

One question ties all three together: how can we build multimodel AI systems that follow the way clinicians already think, integrate naturally in their workflow, and follow the patient’s own path to recovery?