Isabel Smokelin

I am most proud that my work has a tangible impact on the well-being of individuals and helps to protect U.S. citizens.

What projects are you working on at the Laboratory?

I'm currently working on two bioinformatics projects. In one, I am leading a program where my team is building a machine learning model to predict recovery time for military servicemembers following injury or surgery. Military leadership, and eventually hospital staff, could use the tool to promote personalized recovery as well as for operational planning and resource allocation. In this project I've had the opportunity to collaborate with local hospitals to develop our pipeline and to understand and explore medical concepts. I also am leveraging several large language models to help generate and transform data to develop our technology.

For my second project, I am creating a natural-language processing model to automate the ingestion of health-related survey data into the AGENT/RAPIDS database, which is a hub for wearables data. This will significantly speed up our current manual workflow and save time, labor, and resources.

What do you like about working here?

From an intellectual perspective, I find my work to be extremely stimulating and rewarding. I love the tangible applications of my projects, and it's very exciting to see the direct impact it will have on people. I was also fortunate to participate in the Lincoln Scholars program where I received my MBI degree from Harvard Medical School. This is an amazing program that has allowed me to continue to grow and learn while still working at the Laboratory, and pivot my career into a more computational sphere. I love the work-life balance here and the collaborative and supportive work environment.

What are your goals for your time at the Laboratory?

My goal is to continue working on interesting and impactful programs to promote health and improve human performance. I am striving to take on a larger leadership role across my programs and emerge as a leader in the biomedical informatics field with a focus in generative AI applications.

Do you have any advice for someone seeking to work in your field?

My work touches upon AI, machine learning, and health data analytics, all of which are growing and rapidly changing fields. It's important to stay up-to-date with the latest research and developments, and to learn on the job and welcome new technical approaches.