๐ฉโ๐ฌ About Me
Hi there! I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at NYU Abu Dhabi with Dr. Farah Shamout, working at the intersection of robust vision-language models (VLMs) and agentic systems for clinical decision support. My research focuses on building reliable, interpretable, and adaptive AI systems for high-stakes healthcare settings, with an emphasis on robustness, generalization, and real-world deployment.
I completed my PhD in Computer Vision at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), where I was advised by Dr. Dwarikanath Mahapatra and Dr. Mohammad Yaqub. During my PhD, my work centered on domain generalization, out-of-distribution learning, and improving the robustness of multimodal models in healthcare.
Previously, I interned at the Inception Institute of AI (G42), where I developed adaptive VLM-based solutions for healthcare and built interactive tools for generating customized medical summaries. I have also collaborated with organizations such as Omdena, IBM, and Bose Institute, contributing to projects spanning machine learning, automation, and bioinformatics.
Research Interests: My work is driven by the goal of making AI systems more reliable and meaningful in real-world clinical settings. Broadly, I focus on clinical decision support, medical imaging, and multimodal reasoning as well as:
- Robustness & Generalization: Handling distribution shifts, OOD scenarios, and test-time adaptation in VLMs
- Agentic AI Systems: Designing systems that can reason, interact, and assist in clinical workflows
- Trustworthy AI: Bias, reliability, and interpretability in high-stakes environments
Beyond research, I am interested in the broader questions of ethics, purpose, and responsibility in AI, particularly how they intersect with knowledge traditions and real-world impact.
Feel free to connect if youโd like to collaborate or discuss ideas at the intersection of AI and healthcare!
๐ฅ News
- 2024.08: ๐ Presented the paper accepted at ML4H 2024: "XDT-CXR: Investigating Cross-Disease Transferability in Zero-Shot Binary Classification of Chest X-Rays" held at University of Toronot, Toronot, Canada.
- 2024.09: ๐ Presented the paper accepted at EUVIP 2024: "MRIShift: Disentangled Representation Learning for 3D MRI Lesion Segmentation under Distributional Shifts" at Geneva University Hospita, Geneva, Switzerland.
- 2024.05: ๐ Starting summer internship at Inception Institute of AI (G42), Abu Dhabi
- 2022.09: Selected as runner-up in SiemensWomenHackAI
- 2022.03: Served as Jr. Machine Learning Engineer & Instructor at Omdena during Summer of 2022
- 2021.10: Selected as finalist in MENA Healthcare Hackathon
- 2021.08: ๐ Started PhD in Computer Vision at MBZUAI
- 2020.01: ๐ Joined IBM as Associate Systems Engineer in Bengaluru
- 2019.12: Presented the paper on pulmonary disease prediction in SIRS Conference
- 2019.06: Completed my Masters from University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India
๐ Selected Publications
Can language-guided unsupervised adaptation improve medical image classification using unpaired images and texts?
Umaima Rahman, Raza Imam, Boulbaba Ben Amor, Mohammad Yaqub, Dwarikanath Mahapatra.
- Investigating the potential of language guidance in unsupervised domain adaptation for medical image classification using unpaired data.
XDT-CXR: Investigating Cross-Disease Transferability in Zero-Shot Binary Classification of Chest X-Rays
Umaima Rahman, Abhishek Basu, Muhammad Uzair Khattak, Aniq Ur Rahman.
- A comprehensive study on cross-disease knowledge transfer capabilities in zero-shot chest X-ray classification.
MRIShift: Disentangled Representation Learning for 3D MRI Lesion Segmentation under Distributional Shifts
Umaima Rahman, Guangyi Chen, Kun Zhang.
- Novel approach for handling distributional shifts in 3D MRI lesion segmentation using disentangled representation learning.
Obstructive pulmonary disease prediction through heart structure analysis
Umaima Rahman, P. Bhattacharya, Sudipto Saha.
- Innovative method for predicting obstructive pulmonary disease by analyzing heart structure characteristics.
Demo
๐ Honors and Awards
- 2022 SiemensWomenHackAI - 1st Runner-up
- 2022 CISCO Sustainability Challenge, UAE - Among the top 4 finalists
- 2022 Innovation Challenge for Entrepreneurship - Among the top 8 finalists
- 2021 MENA Healthcare Hackathon - Among the top 8 finalists
๐ Education
- ๐ 2021.08 - Present, PhD in Computer Vision, Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
- ๐ 2017.08 - 2019.06, Masters (M.Tech.) in Computer Science and Engineering, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
- ๐ 2015.08 - 2017.06, Masters (M.Sc.) in Computer Science, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India.
- ๐ 2012.05 - 2015.06, Bachelors in Computer Science, St. Xavierโs College, Kolkata, India.
๐ผ Experience
- 05.2024 - 08.2024, Inception Institute of AI (G42), Summer Intern, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
- 03.2022 - 08.2022, Omdena, Jr. Machine Learning Engineer & Instructor, Remote.
- 01.2020 - 05.2021, IBM, Associate Systems Engineer, Bengaluru, India.
- 09.2018 - 05.2019, Division of Bioinformatics, Bose Institute, Guest Researcher, Calcutta, India.