Congratulations to BME alumna Yao Xiao, Ph.D., on being selected to receive a 2020 BMES Career Development Award. The prestigious award aims to “support travel to the BMES Annual Meeting for Graduate Students, Postdoctoral Fellows, and Early Career Professionals from underrepresented populations in biomedical engineering and/or involved in research and training focused on health disparities and minority health”.

Xiao recently earned her Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Florida in 2020 under the supervision of Dr. Ruogu Fang. She obtained her M.S. degree in computer science from Florida International University in 2016, and a B.E. degree in software engineering from Tianjin University in 2013. She will be a postdoc fellow at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center starting from Fall 2020. Yao’s research interests lay in the fields of biomedical image analysis and computational health informatics. By using machine learning, deep learning, and computer vision techniques, her research goal is to provide more reliable, feasible, and affordable solutions for assisting disease diagnosis and treatment decisions. Yao has published 20 peer-reviewed publications, including flagship journals, book chapters, leading conference proceedings, and conference abstracts. Fourteen out of sixteen of the conference publications were accepted as oral presentations and/or with student travel awards. Yao has led or participated in over ten research projects since 2016 after she joined the Smart Medical Informatics Learning and Evaluation lab under the mentorship of Dr. Ruogu Fang. She was selected as the Graduate Student Commencement Speaker at the College of Engineering Graduation Ceremony in Spring 2020. She also contributed in academic services and leaderships, including performing peer-reviews for nine journals and conferences, evaluating UF GSC student travel grants, serving on BME GSC Executive Board, organizing lab journal clubs, and mentoring students.