Interrupting your fourth-year medical studies is a bold decision. But that’s what Gabriel Marx did, immersing himself in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) through the Master of Science in Biomedical Data Science (MSBDS) program at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Mr. Marx is working with Mount Sinai’s Neuropathology Brain Bank and Research CoRE and the Crary Lab on AI-based computer vision algorithms that use digitized brain slides to enhance understanding of neurodegenerative disease and aging. For his master’s thesis, he created a novel model that predicts a person’s age based on a post-mortem slide section of the individual’s hippocampus, an area of the brain important for memory yet vulnerable to the effects of aging and Alzheimer’s disease. John F. Crary, MD, PhD, is Director of the Neuropathology Brain Bank and Research CoRE, and Professor of Pathology, Molecular and Cell-Based Medicine; and Neuroscience.

“I envision myself becoming an ambassador between the clinical side and the engineers and technicians who are on the development side, or even developing tools myself. Either way, my goal is to be on the forefront of harnessing AI for the benefit of dementia patients.”

Mr. Marx then applied this model on a cohort of deceased professional athletes with confirmed chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease caused by repetitive concussions. He found that these athletes’ brains exhibited marked accelerating aging. “These athletes who passed away in their 60’s had brains that looked like they belonged to a 90-year- old,” he says. “This is some of the first quantitative evidence that repeated concussions can cause your brain to age faster.”

In continuing his research, Mr. Marx plans to use this model to discover genes and other environmental factors that either accelerate or protect against the effects of aging in the brain. Mr. Marx is also working with Mount Sinai researchers on a project that uses sophisticated AI models to look at digitized slides and determine the areas of the brain that are most predictive of cognitive impairment. Areas of interest include white matter and the vasculature. “The whole scientific community is still in a place of discovery regarding dementia and neurodegenerative disease,” he says. “Tools like these can form the foundation for effective treatments by advancing our understanding of what is going on in the brain.”

After earning his MSBDS, anticipated in spring 2022, Mr. Marx will return to the medical school where he is pursuing his MD.

Mr. Marx intends to specialize in cognitive impairment and neurological disease and sees AI playing a key role in his efforts to advance therapeutic treatment. “I envision myself becoming an ambassador between the clinical side and the engineers and technicians who are on the development side, or even developing tools myself,” he says. “Either way, my goal is to be on the forefront of harnessing AI for the benefit of dementia patients.”

Briana Bell planned to explore the knowledge and attitudes about mental health among farm workers and lower-caste members in India as her Applied Practice Experience project when she enrolled in the epidemiology track of the Master of Public Health (MPH) program at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai—until the COVID-19 pandemic made that impossible.

When the pandemic also shut down her plans for another project to conduct health fairs for documented and undocumented individuals on both sides of the border in Nogales, Arizona, she began to wonder, “Would I ever be able to do research again?”

But Ms. Bell discovered other research opportunities in New York City, some that could make an impact during the pandemic. First, she connected with Contra COVID, an organization that is providing Latinx and immigrant families with information, health, and social resources. Passionate about its mission, she joined the workshop committee and began designing mental health workshops and delivering supporting booklets.

“I was also drawn [to Mount Sinai] by the extensive research experience of the program’s directors…their expertise and mentorship have been very beneficial for me.’’

She soon began pitching the successful workshops to other nonprofits, resulting in partnerships with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (New York City Metro), Ventanilla de Salud through the Mexican Consulate, Immigrant Health & Cancer Disparities at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Pesquisa, a community of physicians and organizations based in the South Bronx.

During her studies, Ms. Bell also completed a research project for the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Icahn Mount Sinai. Her preliminary findings—that most adults with autism could live independently but there are few interventions in place to support them—will be included in a manuscript Ms. Bell is preparing. “It is imperative we find solutions so that individuals with autism can function on their own without high insurance or out-of-pocket costs for daily needs,” she says, as she continues her research.

“The opportunity to write a manuscript was one reason I chose Mount Sinai,” she explains. “Many programs do not offer that. I was also drawn by the extensive research experience of the program’s instructors. Most have worked at the Department of Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and their expertise and mentorship have been very beneficial for me.”

Nils Hennig, MD, PhD, MPH, Director of Mount Sinai’s Graduate Program in Public Health, says, “Briana represents the best of our program and our students: a strong commitment to research and to serving the community. A small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.”

Ms. Bell received her MPH in 2021. Now, Ms. Bell is working for NYU Langone Health, conducting intervention-based clinical research, and she is looking at growing Contra COVID, which she co-leads, into a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. She is interested in applying her epidemiology expertise in other ways. “My goal is to take my experience with Contra COVID to start a similar program in the next 10 years overseas,” she says. “Prayerfully, I will get there.”

Watching her younger brother, Patrick, grow up with autism, Aleta Murphy saw how much support he needed. “I became interested in how broad this diagnosis is and how autism can be associated with different genetic influences,” she recalls. “I decided to explore those influences and how they manifest as different neuropsychiatric disorders.”

That interest led Ms. Murphy to the Master of Science in Biomedical Science Program at the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Mount Sinai appealed to me because of the strong focus on biology as it relates to human diseases and medicine,” she says. In particular, Ms. Murphy was intrigued by the fact that the graduate school is part of a medical institution that facilitates research on human induced pluripotent stem cell modeling, which she wanted to explore.

Ms. Murphy was drawn to the lab of Kristen Brennand, PhD, which is using stem cell modeling to identify novel insights into the molecular and cellular phenotypes of mental illness. An Adjunct Professor of Neuroscience, and Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Dr. Brennand is also a Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University.

“Mount Sinai appealed to me because of the strong focus on biology as it relates to human diseases and medicine.”

For her thesis project, Ms. Murphy explored the impacts of deletions in neurexin 1, a gene associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. Using stem cells donated by a control group and two patient groups with different deletions in neurexin 1, she grew two different brain organoid types modeled after the dorsal and ventral forebrain.

She found that the organoids grown from the control group were initially larger than those of the patient groups, but the patient group organoids became larger than those of the control group within 40 to 80 days. This, she says, was suggestive of differences in the rate of cell proliferation and maturation in early brain development between the patient groups and the control group.

Separately, Ms. Murphy found differences in the expression of the Ki-67 protein in neural rosettes of the organoids—areas that model the ventricular and subventricular zones of the brain, which contain progenitor cells. Ki-67 is a marker for cell proliferation. One patient group had significantly higher Ki-67 expression in the dorsal forebrain organoids, but both patient groups had significantly less Ki-67 expression in the ventral forebrain organoids than the control group. Again, the results implicate differences in rates of neurogenesis.

“Taken together, these findings suggest that distinct cell types might be affected differently by the gene deletion,” she explains. “That means that the type of cells or the region of the brain you target for treatment would differ from patient to patient.”

Her findings, which could eventually lead to therapeutic targets for neuropsychiatric disorders, earned Ms. Murphy a Master of Science in Biomedical Science Award for Scientific Excellence from the graduate school. “That was amazing because I had some self-doubt at the beginning of the program,” she says. “Winning this award, I felt like all my hard work was validated.”

Ms. Murphy graduated from the program in 2021 and is continuing this line of research at Mount Sinai in the neuroscience PhD program. While she has always been interested in basic research, Ms. Murphy will also explore a career in academia or science policy related to autism education and treatment.

“Having the intersectional knowledge of being a scientist and having a family member with autism, I want to synthesize my experiences to help guide future decisions about how state services are structured to provide care for people with autism, especially in times of a pandemic like COVID-19,” she says.