Academic
Scholarly Appointments
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Michigan State University-
Assistant Professor2018 – Present
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Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine2024 – Present
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National Institutes of Health-
National Service Scholar, Data and Technology Advancement2021
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology-
Research Affiliate2018 – 2021
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Education
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Ph.D., Electrical Engineering and Computer Science2018
Thesis Life After Death: Techniques for the Prognostication of Post-anoxic Coma Patients
AI for predicting whether a patient in coma after cardiac arrest will wake up. I compiled the world's largest dataset of post-cardiac-arrest EEG and built models of how the EEG changes over time, which predict outcomes better than any single snapshot and can help prevent premature withdrawal of care.
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University of Cambridge-
M.Phil., Information Engineering2011
Thesis Shadows of the Mind: Using Discrete Decision Tasks to Infer Mental Representations
AI for inferring mental representations from behavior. People carry internal models of the world that guide what they do in everyday tasks, but those models are hard to measure directly. I developed a method to recover them from simple decision tasks, and showed that the recovered representations predict how people respond to stimuli they have never seen.
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New Mexico State University-
B.Sc., Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics2008
Thesis Jesus Existed: An Investigation into the Pauline Letters for the Historical Jesus
A historical analysis of first-century Christian literature. Rather than the Gospels, I focused on the letters of Paul, the earliest surviving Christian writings, and asked what a source written within decades of the events can and cannot establish about the historical Jesus.
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A poem about education
It is said that a great treasure lies at the roof of the mount,
one with trials and tests, that few can surmount.
And to add to this task you are faced with a storm,
with droplets of water attacking in swarm.
And out the glass window you look and you ponder,
the value of treasures on the mountain off yonder.
Do not disdain a walk in the rain,
for in the unknown you have much to gain.
Embrace the unknown and reflect on the mystery,
as years of your life retreat into history.
Feel the wet stones beneath your feet,
as you fight off the cold with passion's heat.
And continue your climb, ever on higher,
for if you fear not, then you shall not tire.
In the heart of the storm you will think yourself lost,
but fear, for discovery, is such a small cost!
And above the storm cloud, you will climb to the top,
and perhaps you find that the treasure you sought,
was the journey itself, and all that it taught.
Teaching
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Michigan State University
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AI Essentials2026 – Present
An introduction to AI for students from any major: how to understand it, how to use it, and how to evaluate what it produces.
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AI Agents2025 – Present
Students build and evaluate AI agents that combine language models, tools, memory, planning, and human oversight, then embed those agents in web applications deployed to the cloud.
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Web Application Development2020 – 2025
Students build full-stack web applications involving database design, server-side logic, and containerization, using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, and SQL.
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Natural Language ProcessingFall 2020
Graduate students study modern NLP methods by fine-tuning and extending transformer models.
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YouTube-
Prof. Ghassemi2020 – Present
Since the start of my career I have made my lectures and tutorials publicly available, because effective teaching means meeting students where they prefer to learn: online.
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Selected Distinctions
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Congressional Testimony2025
Invited to testify before Congress as an expert witness on the use of AI to improve health care. I was one of four witnesses called for the hearing.
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EMNLP Outstanding Paper Award Nominee2025
EMNLP is one of the two flagship conferences in natural language processing. Our paper on calibrating LLM confidence was nominated for the Outstanding Paper Award, which places it in the top 0.4% of more than 8,000 submissions.
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JPM Faculty Research Award2022, 2023, 2025
An internationally competitive award for research leaders working at the intersection of AI and finance. JPM makes only a few dozen awards worldwide each year. I have received it three times.
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IEEE Senior Member2023
Requires at least ten years of professional practice with significant performance over five of them. Fewer than one in ten of IEEE's roughly 400,000 members hold the grade.
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NIH DATA National Service Scholar2021
One of nine scholars selected nationally to bring data science and technology leadership into the NIH. I was assigned to the BRAIN Initiative and led a team spanning 10 institutes.
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AIMed AI Champion2021
Named an AI Champion by AIMed, the largest community of clinicians and scientists working on AI in medicine, which features a small number of people each year as leading innovators in the field.
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ISCA Best Student Paper Award, Interspeech2018
Interspeech is the largest conference in speech science and technology. In 2018 the association gave three best student paper awards, chosen from twelve shortlisted papers out of more than 700 accepted. Ours, on detecting depression from clinical interviews, was one of the three.
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MassChallenge Boston Award2017
MassChallenge is one of the largest startup accelerators in the world. Ghamut was named among the top startups of the 2017 Boston cohort, a distinction awarded to the top 1.5% of competitors.
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Gates Cambridge Scholarship2010
The University of Cambridge's flagship international scholarship, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. About 80 scholars are chosen each year from more than 6,000 applicants worldwide, a success rate of roughly 1%. It funded my M.Phil.
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Goldwater Scholarship2007
The most prestigious national scholarship for undergraduates in engineering, science, and mathematics. Each university may nominate at most four students, and about a quarter of nominees nationwide are selected.