Theme: Joint Human–AI Systems (TDAI Speaker Series)
Speaker: Wagner Meira Jr., PhD, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil
Date & Time: Friday, January 30, 2026 · 4:00 PM (ET)
Location: Pomerene Hall Room 350
Food: Light refreshments (TBD)
Host: Srinivasan Parthasarathy
Abstract
AI has become a pervasive technology in our lives, and its application to health is among the most promising—and challenging—areas of impact. More recently, attention has shifted toward responsible AI, which seeks to ensure that AI systems are safe, transparent, fair, trustworthy, and ethical.
In this talk, we present our work on human-centered AI models for health, focusing on the diagnosis of cardiovascular conditions from electrocardiograms (ECGs). We discuss how these models have been improved not only in terms of performance and effectiveness, but also to better support responsible deployment and real-world scalability, including applications across the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The talk will conclude with emerging trends and future directions in responsible AI research and development for healthcare.
Speaker
Wagner Meira Jr., PhD
Professor of Computer Science, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil
Bio
Wagner Meira Jr. received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Rochester in 1997 and is a full professor at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. He has authored over 300 publications in leading venues and is co-author of Data Mining and Analysis: Fundamental Concepts and Algorithms (2014) and Data Mining and Machine Learning: Fundamental Concepts and Algorithms (2020), both published by Cambridge University Press. His research focuses on scalability, efficiency, and characterization of large-scale parallel and distributed systems, as well as data mining and machine learning, with applications in health, information retrieval, bioinformatics, e-governance, and cybersecurity.