Hello Yagmur! My name is Subhaditya, it’s nice to meet you :)
I recently graduated with a masters in AI from the RUG (Groningen), and am now looking for a position where I can bring my AI knowledge to healthcare. I found out about this position quite coincidentally a few hours ago, and I knew that I could not miss the chance to apply. There is a history of Parkinsons in my family and while I could do nothing about it as a kid, now I can help contribute to the research. So, here is my formal application to the PhD position :’ Artificial intelligence for monitoring of Parkinson’s disease’.
I read that a lot of data was collected over the last few years using a smartwatch and video in the hope of gaining insights that would potentially help a lot of people. Here is where I can contribute to the most. I am not a healthcare professional, and all these years there wasn’t any skill I could bring to the medical side of innovation. But now I have quite a bit of experience in both Computer Vision and Data Analysis. I am comfortable with using deep learning libraries, data analysis pipelines and python to create whatever is necessary for the project. My main skills lie in building these pipelines, analyzing data and subsequently using AI. Over the past few years, I have done many freelance projects, each of which has given me quite a bit of knowledge about using AI in different domains. I think that that knowledge will be useful here too. Since I am familiar with the pipeline, perhaps I can also help anticipate what might be needed for the future, and ensure we are a little more ready for that. I have also worked quite a bit with vision models and sensor data in past internships and personal projects, which is also useful experience.
Aside from the technical aspects, I love interdisciplinary research. No field is good on it’s own, AI even less so. But that being the case, I acknowledge my lack of information about medical terms. I do think that is an easy fix though, and I’m willing to put in the effort to learn that side as best I can. This position is the perfect next step for me, as someone who is trying to find a position that bridges the gap between a pure AI background to something more useful, healthcare. I read that your lab is part of the ICAI network as well, and Verity healthcare too. That’s so awesome and helpful.
I have done many projects and internships over the past few years, but for most of the time, it did not feel like my work amounted to anything. This is my shot at making it count, and helping make some lives a little better. I know I applied pretty late and you probably have a lot of applications already, but I hope you give me a chance!