"Do we really have to go?" my wife of just four months asked me anxiously eight years ago when I revealed my offer to join Johns Hopkins University, the best place in the world for the research in my field: AI-assisted medicine.
Immigrating from Germany to the United States was not easy. We left behind all of our family and raised our two children in Baltimore without the network so many families rely on. Yet, taking the risk was worth it: The abundant access to research funding—through the NIH, the NSF, foundations, and industry—allows Johns Hopkins access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and helps the university attract the best people to put it to use. In short, Johns Hopkins in particular and U.S. R1 universities in general were—and for now still are—where the field-defining work happens.
Now in its sixth year at Johns Hopkins, my lab is extensively funded by the NIH and the NSF. We are developing new AI algorithms that, using smartphone video, would allow us to diagnose respiratory infections through telehealth, which would save people, including busy parents like me and my wife, long trips to urgent care. We are also creating new technology that will enable safer and less invasive surgeries, both for orthopedic trauma and neurosurgery.
This research is not just academic navel-gazing. Our insights are making a difference in how patients are being treated. Not only do I participate in several JHU spin-out companies that bring our research to the market and make the technology available to patients; we also license our technology to leading industry partners and graduate our excellent students into the workforce of those companies, driving innovation and translation day in, day out.
It is thanks to the catalytic funding from the NIH, NSF, and others, as well as my fantastic colleagues, collaborators, and students—all giants in their fields already or on their way there—that we can deliver on the promise of AI-assisted medicine and save people's lives.
Recent actions that would aggressively cut funding to the NIH and beyond threaten the nation's spearheading role. Not only will those cuts result in the U.S. losing the edge it currently has in biomedical and AI leadership. It will create a climate where these immensely promising talents—those people who have flourishing opportunities around the globe, such as myself—will think carefully about whether they will choose the U.S. over other countries. This will hinder scientific innovation, but it will equally endanger U.S. industry as the people it currently relies on may no longer be here.
Mathias Unberath is the John C. Malone Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at JHU's Whiting School of Engineering. His research focuses on computer-assisted medicine, combining elements of imaging, computer vision, machine learning, and interaction design. He is also among the inaugural cohort of the university's Provost's Fellows for Public Engagement, a group of scholars selected to take part in a yearlong program designed to build their public engagement skills across a range of platforms and audiences.
