U-M BME Welcomes Dr. Joyce Yan-Ran Wang as Assistant Professor

U-M BME is excited to welcome Dr. Joyce Yan-Ran Wang as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Wang will lead pioneering research at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and healthcare, tackling some of the most pressing challenges in understanding complex human diseases and advancing health equity.

“There are so many collaborative opportunities at Michigan, and I know this is the ideal place for me to build independent research in AI, machine learning, and healthcare,” she said.

Dr. Wang’s work focuses on developing innovative medical solutions and advancing precision medicine through the application of AI and machine learning. At Michigan, she looks forward to collaborating with faculty across Michigan Engineering and Michigan Medicine, including the Rogel Cancer Center and the Frankel Cardiovascular Center.

Her research spans multiple domains in automated diagnostics and AI-driven precision medicine, with particular emphasis on cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurological disorders.

“I am especially interested in using AI and machine learning to drive novel healthcare solutions and better understand complex human diseases,” she explained.

Beyond applying existing AI techniques, Dr. Wang is committed to advancing machine learning methods tailored to the unique challenges of the medical domain—particularly in longitudinal medical imaging.

“When a cancer patient undergoes multiple diagnostic scans, we lack algorithms that can effectively jointly analyze these longitudinal images,” she noted.

Her recent development of a transformer-based algorithm addresses this gap, enabling more sophisticated reasoning across serial medical images.

“Conventional machine learning methods fall short when it comes to jointly analyzing multi–time point scans, even though longitudinal imaging is standard clinical practice. We need frameworks that integrate global sequential information while preserving the precise localization from each scan,” she emphasized.

Dr. Wang’s work offers a transformative new lens for longitudinal image reasoning, with broad relevance across medical imaging modalities.

She recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, after earning her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Northwestern University.

As she prepares to launch her lab at Michigan, Dr. Wang is enthusiastic about mentorship and collaboration.

“I warmly invite passionate students and colleagues interested in AI and healthcare to join me in making an impact,” she said.