New Internship Features 10-Weeks of Biomedical Informatics and AI Research Experience

Bridging classroom learning with real-world research and innovation, the Department of Biomedical Informatics (BMI) at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix recently welcomed its 2026 BMI Summer Interns. Attracting more than 270 applicants — representing diverse academic backgrounds — from universities across the United States, the cohort joins the department after a highly competitive selection process.

The 10-week summer program, running from June 8 to August 15, 2026, provides immersive, hands-on research experience at the intersection of artificial intelligence, biomedical data science and translational informatics. Interns will work closely with faculty mentors and interdisciplinary research teams to contribute to active research initiatives spanning data standards, neuroimaging, clinical AI systems and multimodal foundation models while developing technical and analytical skills applicable to careers in biomedical informatics, data science and digital health.

The 2026 cohort includes six students from leading institutions nationwide:

• Joshua Paik, BS in Computer Science from Purdue University and visiting researcher with Sabuncu Lab at Cornell University.
• Tisha Thakkar, BS candidate in Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology and AI Engineering intern at Codertroop Inc.
• Zaeem Qureshi, BS in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and former intern with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
• Rohit Poduval, junior majoring in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota.
• Harmeet Singh, junior majoring in Computer Science at University of California, Irvine.
• Anson Ting, Junior majoring in Computational and Systems Biology at University of California, Los Angeles.

For many participants, the program provides an opportunity to apply technical expertise to real-world biomedical challenges while exploring future career pathways in artificial intelligence and health care innovation.

“This program is the perfect place to grow as an interdisciplinary researcher at the high-impact intersection of AI and biology,” said Rohit Poduval. “By translating vast, multimodal data into models that are not only powerful, but interpretable, we can uncover the insights needed to genuinely improve human health.”

For Tisha Thakkar, the potential of agentic AI systems in biomedical research is what excited her the most. “I want to build tools that can reason about and explain their steps, inspect structural MRI data, flag quality issues and help researchers trust the results,” she said. “Working at the intersection of AI and biomedical research feels like exactly the kind of problem I want to spend my career on.”

Anson Ting highlighted the opportunity to strengthen his foundation in biomedical AI and informatics while contributing to cutting-edge research. “I’m excited for the chance to work on multimodal proteomic and biomedical AI models spanning both the molecular biology and clinical aspects of human health,” he said.

Over the next 10 weeks, interns will contribute to four BMI Signature Projects that address emerging challenges in biomedical informatics, artificial intelligence and data-driven health care:

• SWDRC Metadata Schema Model (S2M2) – Mentored by Henning Hermjakob, the department’s chief data science advisor, the project focuses on standardized metadata frameworks to support interoperable multimodal diabetes research across the Southwest Diabetes Research Center consortium.
• sMRI Agentic Preprocessing Assistant – Mentored by Dongren Yao, an assistant research professor of BMI, this project analyzes agentic AI workflows for structural MRI preprocessing, FreeSurfer-based feature extraction and explainable neuroimaging pipelines.
• CARE AI Lite – Mentored by Jack Rincon and Irsyad Adam, AI instructors with BMI, the project aims to develop AI systems to improve clinical communication, empathy and patient engagement using evidence-based frameworks.
• Multimodal Proteomics + LLM – Mentored by Erika “Yilin” Zheng, the lead technology officer with BMI, the project centers on multimodal foundation models integrating proteomics and complementary biological data to improve predictive modeling and biological reasoning.

Across these ventures, interns will gain experience in machine learning, biomedical data analysis, algorithm development and translational research while contributing to ongoing efforts in artificial intelligence-driven health innovation.

Teaming up with program instructors, research staff and collaborators across the BMI, their contributions will support the department’s broader mission to advance biomedical discovery and develop the next generation of leaders in biomedical informatics, data science and AI-enabled health care transformation.

The internship signals the department’s commitment to workforce development in biomedical AI and translational data science through immersive training opportunities.