Dr. Prateek Prasanna, an Indian-American assistant professor at Stony Brook University, has earned the prestigious CAREER Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). His groundbreaking project centers on leveraging how expert clinicians visually interpret complex medical images—specifically through their eye gaze—to improve artificial intelligence systems used in diagnostics.
Titled “CAREER: Towards Gaze-guided Medical Image Analysis,” Prasanna’s work focuses on enhancing AI interpretability and accuracy by incorporating how radiologists and pathologists naturally view and assess radiology and pathology scans. This approach marks a significant step toward merging human cognitive behavior with machine learning, with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes.
“This award is a tremendous honor and opportunity,” said Dr. Prasanna. “We’re aiming to create AI tools that reflect how seasoned professionals think, see, and reason. Eye-tracking data gives us a real-time look into clinical decision-making—an invaluable resource for training smarter, more reliable AI.”
At the helm of the Imaging Informatics for Precision Medicine (IMAGINE) Lab, Prasanna leads a team focused on developing translational machine learning models that synthesize imaging, pathology, and genomic data. His research spans oncology and non-oncology domains, with strong emphasis on explainable AI and biomarker discovery in low-data environments.
The NSF CAREER Award will also support Prasanna’s education initiatives, including hands-on research training, interdisciplinary coursework, and clinical collaborations. He is spearheading curriculum development for the Radiology Informatics Micro Credential Program at Stony Brook University to train the next generation of AI-savvy clinicians and engineers.
In addition to the NSF recognition, Dr. Prasanna was recently awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R03 grant in partnership with the School of Dental Medicine—an interdisciplinary initiative born from a boot camp hosted by the Institute for Engineering-Driven Medicine at Stony Brook.
Dr. Prasanna holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers University, and a BTech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Calicut, India.
With a strong academic background and a passion for AI in healthcare, Dr. Prasanna continues to drive innovation at the intersection of technology, medicine, and education—setting the stage for future breakthroughs in medical diagnostics.
