Sydney Pugh, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher in Informatics
Dr. Sydney Pugh is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Artificial Intelligence for Ambulatory Care Innovation (AI-4-AI) Lab within the Informatics Division at DBEI, advised by Dr. Kevin Johnson. Her research is focused on developing trustworthy, effective, and explainable medical AI systems, with an emphasis on innovative methods to address the practical challenges inherent in real-world clinical data, such as small sample sizes and the lack of reliable ground-truth labels. Dr. Pugh’s current work is centered on creating a real-time multimodal AI system for the early detection of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Pugh is also a Penn AI Fellow and Penn alum.
Research Areas
Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Digital Health Data, Learning Health Systems
Education
- PhD, Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania 2024
- MSE, Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania 2021
- BS, Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Loyola University Maryland 2019
Contact
Email: sydney.pugh@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
🎓 Google Scholar
🔗 GitHub
Research Highlights
WATCH (Warning Assessment and Alerting Tool for Cognitive Health)
Overview: WATCH is a screening tool to detect signs and assess risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease. WATCH leverages a multimodal approach, analyzing audio and video from clinic visits alongside electronic health record (EHR) data to provide clinicians with real-time alerts regarding potential cognitive issues.