Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics (CCI) is proud to announce that Satvik Tripathi, BS computer science ’26, Pennoni Honors College, was awarded honorable mention in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2024 Student E-poster Competition in Technology, Engineering & Math.
As a finalist, Tripathi was invited to present his poster, titled “Domain-Transfer Learning for Diabetic Retinopathy Classification in Resource Constraint Settings,” in person at the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting in Denver, CO (Feb. 15 to 17). 
As the recipient of this prestigious honor, Tripathi will be presented with a certificate of recognition, and will be acknowledged on the AAAS website and in the April 2024 issue of AAAS’ renowned journal Science.
"We are incredibly proud of Satvik's achievements and the recognition he has received from the world's largest scientific organization," said Yi Deng, PhD, dean and Isaac L. Auerbach Professor, CCI. “His contributions to both academia and research exemplify the spirit of innovation and excellence that our College strives to foster in its students.”
Under the mentorship of Edward Kim, PhD, associate professor of computer science, the poster presents a study focusing on using transfer learning to improve the analysis of medical images, such as X-rays or MRIs, especially in resource-constrained settings (such as rural areas or developing countries).
“Transfer learning is like using knowledge gained from one task to help with another similar task,” said Tripathi. “In this case, it's about applying what we've learned from analyzing one set of medical images to help analyze another set.”
Tripathi believes the project has the potential to make medical diagnosis more accurate and accessible, even in places where advanced medical equipment and expertise are scarce. “By leveraging existing knowledge and resources, this approach could significantly improve healthcare outcomes for people in underserved communities,” he said.
He presented an example application of his methods in retinal images to detect diabetic retinopathy (blindness caused due to diabetes) in patients, where he showed comparable efficacy of his model with current state-of-the-art models with only one-sixth of the data size used traditionally.
Tripathi’s research was supported by a winter 2024 Undergraduate Research Mini-Grant through Pennoni Honors College.
As a finalist in the competition, Tripathi was invited to present his poster in person at the 2024 AAAS Annual Meeting in Denver, CO, this February.
Tripathi was recently named a 2023-24 Nina Henderson Provost Scholar for the second consecutive year. In this capacity, he is actively collaborating with Steve Weber, PhD, vice provost for undergraduate curriculum and education, and Drexel's Standing Committee on Artificial Intelligence (SCAI) on a groundbreaking project titled "Curricular Analytics & Curricular Applications of Generative AI."
The AAAS Student E-poster competition recognizes the individual efforts of students working toward an undergraduate, graduate or doctoral-level degree. In 2023, Drexel University served as the host institution for the AAAS Annual Meeting, where Drexel undergraduate and graduate students took home 44 percent of the poster competition awards.
For additional information about AAAS, visit www.aaas.org.