Georgia CTSA - Informatics Lunch and Learn

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Yashar Kiarashi
Postdoctoral Fellow
Emory University School of Medicine

In this talk, Yashar Kiarashi will discuss how sleep disturbances, which are common among individuals with autism spectrum disorder, significantly impact daytime behavior and development. He will explain how his lab's model leverages subtle changes in sleep patterns to predict challenging daytime behaviors and investigate whether a behavior sequence may trigger another - potentially high-risk- behavior on subsequent days. By incorporating biological and environmental factors into our research, they further demonstrate the potential of approaches driven by artificial intelligence for behavior prediction. With continued development, this technology may provide early warnings to caregivers, enabling proactive interventions to reduce behaviors that pose a high risk.

BIO
I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Clifford Lab, where I work on AI-driven methods for improving health and healthcare. My main focus is on developing unique sensing technologies to detect physiological and psychological patterns, with the goal of enabling early detection and personalized care to improve patient outcomes. For the past three years, I've been exploring new biomarkers for neurological disorders using wearable and nearable technologies. In collaboration with the Cognitive Empowerment Program and the Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, I’m working on identifying cognitive markers in older adults at risk for Mild Cognitive Impairment. This involves integrating data from NextSense in-ear EEG devices, wristband health monitors, and analyzing movement and social interactions to get a clearer picture of cognitive health. I’m also collaborating with The Center for Discovery on a project that looks at how sleep and daytime behaviors are linked in children with autism. For this, I'm building an end-to-end edge computing system using off-body sensors in a privacy-focused way to better understand the connection between sleep and health. Before coming to Emory for my postdoc, I earned my PhD from Georgia Tech. My PhD work focused on developing new approaches for knowledge discovery in nanophotonics, particularly using dimensionality reduction. This research helped speed up the design of nanoscale sensors by using explainable AI models to better understand how light interacts with matter! Looking ahead, my goal is to discover new health biomarkers for neurodiverse populations through cutting-edge wearable technology, building on the work I’ve published.