Machine Learning for Medicine & Biology
Context
Machine learning is transforming medicine, for example by enabling physicians to incorporate vast amounts of data and knowledge into each of their clinical decisions. Machine learning also advances our understanding of the biology underlying human diseases, with the future perspective to identify the key molecular mechanisms in each individual patient and to devise fully personalized therapies.
Scope
We pursue ambitious research and high-quality teaching focusing on machine learning in medicine, with three pillars: (1) Methods development for interpretable deep learning, large language models, multi-omics data analysis, computational image analysis, and causal modeling; (2) proof-of-concept applications in medicine and biology, including personalized cancer therapy, systems immunology, and AI-supported medical education and practice; (3) capacity building, provision of expertise and support, teaching, and public outreach in one of the fastest-growing and most transformative areas of biomedical research.
Research Groups
The AI Institute currently comprises the following research groups that pursue ambitious research in the following areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning in medicine:
- Machine Learning in Biomedicine (Principal Investigator: Christoph Bock)
- Medical Image Computing (Principal Investigator: Hrvoje Bogunovic)
- Machine Learning for Prediction and Signal Processing (Principal Investigator: Georg Dorffner)
- AI in Systems Biology (Principal Investigator: David S. Fischer, starting December 2024)
- Dynamics of Neural Systems (Principal Investigator: Adam Gosztolai)
- Trustworthy AI (Principal Investigator: Matthias Samwald)
History
The institute was established in 1977 as the “Institute for Medical Cybernetics” within the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna, which is Austria’s first and largest university founded in 1365. Over the years, the name of the institute evolved to “Institute for Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence” (1984), “Institute for Artificial Intelligence” (2010), “Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support” (2016), and to its current name “Institute of Artificial Intelligence” (2022). Moreover, the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna was established as independent university in 2004, which operates in close association with the Vienna General Hospital and is among the top-ranking medical schools in Europe. The Institute of Artificial Intelligence (AI Institute) is part of the Center for Medical Data Science at the Medical University of Vienna.