Dr. Ruogu “Rena” Fang
Flowers Family Dean’s Faculty Fellow in Engineering
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University
Pioneering AI-empowered precision brain health & brain-inspired AI. Ranked Top 100 worldwide in image analysis.
Research Highlights
AI-Empowered Brain Health
Machine learning for brain dynamics, early Alzheimer's diagnosis, and precision interventions.
Explore researchBrain-Inspired AI
Leveraging neuroscience principles to develop next-generation artificial intelligence systems.
Explore researchMedical Image Analysis
Deep learning for CT perfusion, retinal imaging, brain segmentation, and biomedical vision.
Explore researchFoundation Models and Agentic AI
3D vision foundation models, digital twins, agentic AI systems, and generative AI for biomedical applications.
Explore researchInside the SMILE Lab
A look inside the Smart Medical Informatics Learning and Evaluation (SMILE) Lab at Vanderbilt University.
Featured In
Open Positions
Postdoc: Fully funded in Medical AI, brain-inspired AI, and precision brain health.
Ph.D.: Multiple fully-funded positions in generative AI, foundation models, and digital twins.
Learn moreLatest Highlights
Latest News
Our publication "Concept2Brain: An AI model for predicting neurophysiological responses to text and pictures" is accepted for publication in Nature Communications.
Our paper "Emotional Responses to Naturalistic and AI-generated Affective Pictures: A Systematic Comparison" is accepted by Emotion.
Our paper "Biologically Inspired Deep Neural Network Models for Visual Emotion Processing" is accepted by Network Neuroscience.
Dr. Fang is promoted to Full Professor.
UF News features Dr. Fang and SMILE Lab's research demonstrating that routine retinal photographs can help predict Alzheimer's disease risk factors years before symptoms appear. [UF News]
Our paper "REVEAL++: Differentiable Phenotypic Grouping for Vision–Language Retinal Modeling of Alzheimer’s Disease Risk" is accepted by MICCAI 2026 in Strasbourg, France.
Our editorial "Editorial: Women in Brain Imaging and Stimulation in the Era of Artificial Intelligence" is accepted by Frontiers in Human Neuroscience!
Our paper "Associative Emotional Learning in Convolutional Neural Networks" is accepted by Neural Computation on June 9, 2026!
Our paper "Primary Prevention of Parkinson’s Disease: Proceedings, the 8 C’s and a Position Statement from the Parkinson’s Disease Prevention Think Tank" is accepted by npj Parkinson's Disease on June 8, 2026!
Our collaborative paper "A Single Reference-Guided Adaptation of Foundation Model Predictions for High-Performance Image Segmentation" is accepted by IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (TBME)! This is a collaboration with Drs. Lei Xing and James Zou from Stanford University. [Paper]
Dr. Fang is selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering's Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering 2026 Symposium.
Congratulations to SMILE Lab PhD Zhimin Zong on successfully defending his PhD dissertation!
Our paper entitled "Prediction of Alzheimer's Disease Risk Factors from Retinal Images via Deep Learning: Development and Validation of Biologically Relevant Morphological Associations in the UK Biobank" is accepted by Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (JAD)!
Dr. Fang receives a new $3.5M NIH NIMH R01 award (R01MH112558) as MPI for “MyAPS: Development and Validation of an AI Platform for Generating Emotional Pictures.”
Dr. Fang receives a new NSF AI Education supplement to the NCS-FO award (NCS-FO-2318984) entitled "Brain × AI 101: A Neuroscience-AI Curriculum Toolkit for High School AI Education".
Congratulations to SMILE Lab undergraduate Veronica Ramos Rodriguez on being recognized as one of UF BME's 2026 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship recipients! [UF BME]
Dr. Fang is invited to give a talk at MaLMIC (Machine Learning Medical Imaging Consortium) in Canada on "Brain Digital Twins and Foundation Models".
Congratulations to SMILE Lab Postdoc Wasif Khan on receiving the University of Florida Graduate School Excellence in Research Award for Postdoc! [Link]
Congratulations to SMILE Lab PhD candidate Seowung Leem on receiving the HWCOE Gator Engineering Attribute Award in Creativity!
A collaborative paper entitled "The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Deep Brain Stimulation" published in Seminars in Neurology. [Paper]
Dr. Fang gave a talk on "Intelligence in Nature, Insight in Machines" at Center for Machine Learning, Harvard University.
Paper "Revealing Neurocognitive and Behavioral Patterns by Self-Supervised Manifold Learning from Dynamic Brain Data" published in Nature Computational Science. [Paper]
Congratulations to SMILE Lab student Chintan Acharya on the publication of "TRACE: Applying AI Language Models to Extract Ancestry Information from Curated Biomedical Literature". [Paper]
Dr. Fang invited to give a talk at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, MGH & HMS & MIT.
One paper accepted by ICCV 2025.
One paper accepted by MICCAI 2025.
Dr. Fang ranked among the Top 100 (top 0.4%) researchers worldwide in image analysis.
Affiliations
Associate Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Vanderbilt University
Founding Director
Center for Intelligent Imaging, Vanderbilt University
Tenured Associate Professor
J. Crayton Pruitt Family Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida (2022–2026)
Visiting Associate Professor
Stanford University, School of Medicine & Humanities and Sciences (2024–2025)
Visiting Associate Professor
Harvard Medical School & Massachusetts General Brigham (2025)
Former Affiliated Faculty (University of Florida, through 2026)
8 appointments- UF Intelligent Clinical Care Center Associate Director
- Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
- Dept. of Radiology, College of Medicine
- Dept. of Computer & Information Science & Engineering
- Center for Cognitive Aging and Memory
- UF Genetics Institute
- UF Health Cancer Center
- Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases
Selected Honors
Stanford Science Faculty Fellowship
Stanford University
Doctoral Dissertation Advisor/Mentoring Award
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, UF
NAI Senior Member
National Academy of Inventors
Faculty Teaching Excellence Award
J. Crayton Pruitt Family Dept of BME, UF
Pioneering Research HiPerGator Award
University of Florida Research Computing
Inaugural AI Course Award
University of Florida
Best Paper Award
HEALTHINF 2024, Rome, Italy
Rising Star Award
ASEMFL (Engineering)
Pruitt Endowed Fellowship & Tenure
University of Florida
Tenure & Promotion to Associate Professor
University of Florida
Faculty Award for Excellence in Innovation
Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, UF
Faculty Research Excellence Award
J. Crayton Pruitt Family Dept of BME, UF
AI Catalyst Award
NVIDIA – University of Florida
Great Teaching Certificate
UF Center for Teaching Excellence
David Goldstein Presidential Trainee Award
American Society for Clinical Pharmacology
IEEE Senior Member Grade
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Top-ranked (#1) “Fovea Detection”
First International Diabetic Retinopathy Challenge, IEEE ISBI
Top-ranked (#1) “Optical Disc Segmentation”
First International Diabetic Retinopathy Challenge, IEEE ISBI
Robin Sidhu Young Scientist Award
Society for Brain Mapping
Future Academy of Computing
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
NSF Best REU and RET Poster Awards
National Science Foundation
Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award
Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU)
NSF IIS CRII Award
National Science Foundation
CISE CAREER Workshop Travel Award
National Science Foundation
Hsien Wu and Daisy Yen Wu Memorial Award
Cornell University
ECE Women’s Conference Travel Grant
IBM – Cornell University
Best Paper Award
IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP)
Best PhD Poster Award
Cornell Engineering Research Conference
Irwin and Joan Jacobs Fellowship
Cornell University
Professional Service
Reviewer For
12 venuesJoin the SMILE Lab
We are looking for passionate researchers. Fully funded Postdoc and Ph.D. positions available in Medical AI, brain-inspired AI, generative AI, foundation models, LLMs, and digital twins.
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