Hello there, I’m Nadine!

Research Topics

Applied Clinical AI · Speech Processing · XAI · Responsible AI · AI Governance · AI & Cybersecurity · HCI

Affiliation

Concordia University CRBLM Mila Conversational AI Lab Applied Perception Lab The Douglas Research Centre

About Me

Academic Background

My academic journey began with a Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) in Software Engineering from Concordia University, where I built a strong foundation in problem-solving, critical thinking, and human-centered systems design. I am now expanding on that foundation through my Master’s research at Concordia University and Mila, under the supervision of Dr. Mirco Ravanelli and Dr. Marta Kersten-Oertel, where I design clinically grounded AI systems that leverage speech as a biomarker across a range of physical and mental health conditions, with a focus on early detection, continuous monitoring, and equitable care delivery. I work closely with clinicians and researchers to ensure these systems are grounded in real-world workflows, co-designed with their users, and never positioned to replace clinician or human judgment.

My work sits at the intersection of machine learning, medicine, and ethics, with an emphasis on building explainable, uncertainty-aware systems that can adapt to diverse patient populations. I am especially passionate about creating technologies that prioritize collaboration over automation, and care over convenience. As an advocate for social impact, I am driven by projects that use AI not just to optimize, but to care.

This research is generously supported by the NSERC CGS-M federal award and the Arbour Foundation.

Research Experience

I am currently a Research Assistant at the Centre of Excellence for Youth Mental Health (CEYMH), Douglas Research Centre, McGill University, working under the supervision of Dr. Lena Palaniyappan and Dr. Alban Voppel. My work focuses on powering the Voici Speech Bank by engineering and maintaining pipelines to clean, align, and structure longitudinal clinical speech data across diverse multisite studies, and maintaining data collection workflows using REDCap. This infrastructure supports research into speech-based markers of psychosis and relapse risk, enabling multimodal analyses of the relationships between voice, symptoms, and cognition. Alongside this, I co-authored a paper evaluating the performance of state-of-the-art ASR models on psychiatric speech across clinical populations, demographic groups, and task types, currently under review at Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience (Nature Portfolio).

At the Applied Perception Lab, I am engaged in two concurrent AI governance projects examining whose values get embedded in clinical AI systems, and what it takes to make those conflicts visible and actionable before they become crises. One investigates anticipatory fairness in surgical AI futures through speculative design methods. The other develops empirical ethical personas for healthcare AI governance, derived from data collected across a deliberately diverse set of stakeholders spanning patients, clinicians, students, and technologists. Both are grounded in the conviction that governance cannot be an afterthought.

My introduction to healthcare research began in 2022, when I received an NSERC USRA federal award to pursue my first research project under the supervision of Dr. Marta Kersten-Oertel at Concordia’s Applied Perception Lab. This project focused on understanding surgeons’ workflow challenges through a user-centered design approach, including the development of ventriculostomy prototypes to improve surgical efficiency. The project culminated in a publication presented at MICCAI 2022’s EPIMI workshop. Through this work, I developed an enduring interest in how design choices and evaluation practices shape who benefits from clinical technologies and whose perspectives are represented.

Honors & Awards

Award	Issuer	Date
Power Corporation Of Canada Graduate Fellowship Graduate Award	Concordia University	Jun 2026
Arbour Foundation Master's Scholarship	Fondation Arbour	Sep 2025
Concordia University Special Entrance Award	Concordia University	Oct 2024
NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master's (CGS-M)	Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada	Apr 2024
Bourse d'Excellence en Génie	Quebec Ministry of Education	Jun 2022
NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA)	Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada	May 2022

Ethics, Governance & Responsible AI

My approach to technology and research is shaped by formal training and hands-on learning in ethics, governance, and responsible AI. As a committed Tech Steward, I developed a deeper understanding of systemic bias in technology and the role of values-driven practice in shaping more responsible and inclusive technological systems.

I hold a TCPS 2: CORE-2022 certification in research ethics, where I learned best practices for the ethical conduct of research involving human participants, including informed consent, privacy, and fairness. This training directly informs how I approach data collection and participant-centered research in practice.

Through the World Health Organization (WHO) Academy course Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health, I gained exposure to global ethical principles, governance frameworks, and regulatory considerations guiding the design and deployment of AI systems in healthcare, with an emphasis on human rights and public benefit.

In addition, I participated in Mila’s Trustworthy and Responsible AI Learning (TRAIL) program, where I learned to integrate ethical reflection, impact assessment, and risk mitigation throughout the machine learning research lifecycle, from problem formulation to downstream evaluation.

I actively keep up with evolving best practices in responsible AI through continued certification, most recently completing Foundations in Responsible AI & AI Ethics through Mila and Master AI Tools for Research through WiseUp Communications. This is an area I treat as ongoing practice, not a checkbox.

Emerging Interests

I am increasingly drawn to the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, particularly around agentic AI systems, resilient infrastructures, and cyber-physical systems. As AI becomes more autonomous and more deeply embedded in critical infrastructure, the questions of how these systems fail, how they are attacked, and how they are made robust feel both urgent and underexplored. This is an area I am actively learning in and hope to contribute to. Earlier interests, including participation in the Climate Change AI Summer School, shaped how I think about systems-level risk and the societal consequences of technological decisions — a thread that runs through everything I work on today.

Leadership, Service and Engagement

Role	Affiliation	Dates of Service
Member	Arabs in Neuroscience (AiN)	Apr 2026 – Present
Member	The Levantines	Feb 2026 – Present
Member	Association Étudiante de Mila (AÉM), Mila - Quebec AI Institute	Oct 2025 – Present
Subcommittee Member	Standing Committee on Research, Graduate Students' Association (GSA), Concordia University	Sep 2025 – Present
Member	Arbour Foundation Scholars	Sep 2025 – Present
Member	Golden Key International Honour Society	Sep 2025 – Present
Organizer	Brainhack MTL, Concordia University x McGill University	July 2025 – Present
Subcommittee Member	Concordia Council on Student Life (CCSL), Graduate Students' Association (GSA), Concordia University	January 2025 – April 2025
Mentee	GEMinAI Program, Concordia University's Applied AI Institute	October 2024 – May 2025
Ambassador	School of Graduate Studies, Concordia University	September 2024 – May 2026