Office of Alumni Affairs and Development

25 Shattuck Street
Boston, MA 02115

Amid rapid advances in medical knowledge and a growing array of opportunities to prevent and treat disease, physicians increasingly pursue ever-narrower and more siloed specialties. At the same time, rising health care costs, shortages of primary care providers, and persistent barriers to equitable access strain health systems worldwide. Together, these forces create an urgent need to transform medicine by thoughtfully integrating artificial intelligence into more facets of research and clinical practice. When researchers, clinicians, and patients apply AI responsibly, they can better analyze vast datasets, uncover patterns, and make data-driven decisions with unprecedented speed and precision, while also confronting substantial technical, computational, ethical, and societal challenges.  

Harvard Medical School created the AI in Medicine (AIM) PhD track in 2024, administered by the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI), to meet this moment. The program trains outstanding computational scientists to harness large-scale biomedical data and cutting-edge AI methods to develop technologies and research that meaningfully improve health outcomes worldwide, with a clear focus on both the quality and equity of care. The AIM program deliberately combines disciplines spanning statistics, computer science, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, epidemiology, and clinical medicine, and it prepares students to build tools and infrastructure that serve patients, providers, and health systems.   

In close partnership with Boston’s renowned hospitals, AIM students combine rigorous coursework in advanced machine learning with clinical shadowing and rotations that ground their work in real-world care delivery. By engaging directly with clinicians and patients, students learn to accelerate diagnoses, personalize therapies, and reduce costs through disease prediction and more efficient health care delivery. They collaborate with leading AI researchers and clinical scientists, and position themselves to develop innovations that augment clinical decision-making and drive biomedical discovery.  

The Breyer Family Foundation’s $400,000 grant to Harvard Medical School catalyzes this vision. The Foundation’s support establishes Breyer Graduate Fellows within the AIM track and empowers a new generation of leaders at the intersection of artificial intelligence and medicine. These fellows will push the boundaries of discovery and help design a health care system that delivers exceptional, more equitable care. 

Here, we highlight the impact of the Breyer Family Foundation’s support by profiling Roshan Kenia, the first recipient of the Breyer Fellowship, and show how this investment is already advancing a new era of AI-driven medicine.    

Breyer Family Foundation

March 2026​

Roshan Kenia is a first-year AI in Medicine (AIM) PhD student. He focuses his research on computer vision, self-supervised learning, and interpretability in the medical domain. He earned his undergraduate degree from Stony Brook University with a double major in computer science and applied mathematics and statistics. He then completed a master’s in computer science at Columbia University, where he researched AI applications in ophthalmology. He also completed an eight-month co-op at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he developed deep learning methods for axon microscopy data and contributed to a robotic ultrasound device.  

From their first year onward, all AIM PhD students supplement their formal coursework with three mentored rotations in AIM faculty laboratories. These rotations help students identify a thesis area that aligns with their interests and career goals. For his first research rotation, Roshan joined the lab of DBMI Associate Professor Pranav Rajpurkar, where he developed AI agents that operate autonomously in medical imaging competitions. He is currently completing his second rotation in Assistant Professor Bill Lotter’s lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where he is pursuing anomaly detection using a graph neural network framework to model individual organs. He anchors his research in the goal of translating advanced AI methods into tools that improve clinical decision-making and patient outcomes. After completing his third rotation, he plans to select a thesis mentor and begin a dissertation project that aligns with his long-term professional aspirations.  

In addition to the generous support from the Breyer Family Foundation, Roshan holds a competitive National Science Foundation fellowship, which he will use to supplement his Breyer Scholarship in his second year of doctoral study.  

March 17, 2026

Dear Ronda and Bill,

I’m pleased to share this report on the Ronda Stryker and William Johnston Funds in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Your support enables physicians, scientists, and health care workers from around the world to receive outstanding training, conduct pioneering research, and provide high-quality care for patients in the most vulnerable communities.

This year’s report highlights the work by HMS faculty and students on climate change, infectious disease, childhood development, and global surgery. Your generosity supports research and training in Peru, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and many other countries, directly improving the health and well-being of disadvantaged populations.

The Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (DGHSM) is deeply grateful for your steadfast commitment to alleviating suffering worldwide and for your partnership in advancing global health equity. Under Vikram Patel’s leadership as chair, the DGHSM continues to develop interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship, education, and strategic partnerships. We look forward to your participation at the next GHAS meeting.