Dr. Xiaolei Huang Receives Prestigious NSF CAREER Award and Named UMRF Research Professor

Advancing trustworthy AI in healthcare while shaping the next generation of researchers

Dr. Xiaolei Huang, assistant professor in Computer Science at the University of Memphis, has been recognized with two distinguished honors that highlight his research leadership and impact in the field of healthcare-focused artificial intelligence. He is the recipient of a highly competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for his project “Temporal Learning Towards Trustworthy Decision for Healthcare” and has also been named a 2025 UMRF Research Professor by the University of Memphis Research Foundation.

Huang’s CAREER project tackles a pressing challenge in modern medicine: ensuring that machine learning models remain reliable as healthcare data evolves over time. Current predictive models are often trained on past patient records but deployed for future patients, where shifts in populations, disease trends, and clinical practices—known as temporal shifts—can degrade accuracy and even widen health disparities. To address this, Huang is developing a novel temporal learning framework that treats different time periods as domains, allowing models to dynamically adapt while preserving fairness and performance across diverse patient groups.

The project integrates three research threads: identifying how temporal changes affect model reliability, designing time-aware algorithms for greater generalizability, and ensuring equitable benefits for all patient populations. The methods will be validated using real-world clinical text data in critical areas such as mental health and cancer assessment. This innovative approach positions Huang’s work at the forefront of trustworthy and socially responsible AI for healthcare.

Beyond research, the CAREER award carries a strong educational mission. Huang will incorporate findings into new undergraduate and graduate courses in machine learning for healthcare, mentor students through NSF’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, and partner with local K–12 schools and HBCUs to inspire a diverse pipeline of future computational health innovators.

In recognition of this nationally competitive achievement, the University of Memphis Research Foundation has awarded Huang a three-year UMRF Research Professorship beginning September 1, 2025. This professorship provides research support and affirms the University’s commitment to cultivating faculty success and advancing its Carnegie R1 research profile.

These twin honors reflect Dr. Huang’s exceptional contributions to AI and healthcare and his dedication to training the next generation of scientists and his work exemplifies the University’s mission to drive innovation with both technical excellence and societal impact.

For more information on these awards or his research, contact Huang at xhuang7@memphis.edu.