Dr. Malek Kamoun, Professor and Director of HUP’s Clinical Immunology and HLA Immunogenetics Laboratory, and Dr. Ryan Urbanowicz of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are working to develop machine learning/AI strategies to improve kidney matching and decrease the likelihood of graft failure in recipients. This summer, they received help from three Penn students through the Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring Program (PURM).  The experience of these three students and Dr. Kamoun’s research were recently profiled in Penn Today: How machine learning could aid compatibility in kidney transplantation

PURM offers a unique collaboration and mentorship experience to students completing their first or second year of undergraduate studies. Participating students spend the summer conducting innovative research and building a one-on-one relationship with a Penn faculty member. Each PURM student receives a $5,000 award for the 10-week program, funded by the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF). Standing faculty members in any discipline from any Penn school may apply to mentor PURM students. Faculty provide a meaningful mentorship to the students, exposing them to the various phases of the research process and the “realities of academic scholarship.” introducing them to all of the realities of academic scholarship. More information about the program can be found here.

Dr. Kamoun served as faculty mentor for students who were interested in furthering research on the novel FIBERS algorithm. Drs. Kamoun and Urbanowicz were part of a team that developed this algorithm to group kidney donor-recipient pairs into low- and high-risk groups for graft survival. Penn undergraduates Sphia Sadek, Antonios Kriezis, and Aryan Roy worked remotely and each explored a different avenue of the project. In addition to testing and programming, the students spent time learning about the HLA system, new methods of machine learning, and the larger applications of their work from Dr. Kamoun, Dr. Urbanowicz, and their lab teams.

Dr. Kamoun, Dr. Urbanowicz, and Dr. Nicholas Brown co-authored a paper assessing the performance of the FIBERS algorithm in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics, published in the spring of 2023.