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Draft:Mercy Nyamewaa Asiedu

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Not to be confused with Mercy Asiedu

Mercy Nyamewaa Asiedu (born March 27th 1991) is a Ghanaian biomedical engineer and artificial intelligence researcher known for her work in developing the Callascope, an imaging device for self cervical cancer screening. She is also known for developing artificial intelligence algorithms for cervical cancer diagnosis, and ultrasound imaging as well as understanding and mitigating artificial intelligence biases in global health. She co-founded GAPhealth Technologies Inc. and is currently a research scientist at Google Research.

Background and Education

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Asiedu was born on March 27th 1991 to Dr. Ernest Assah Asiedu and Mrs. Monica Blankson Asiedu in Cape Coast, Ghana. She lived in Aberdeen, Scotland from 1992-1995, while her father completed his doctorate degree in Agriculture at the University of Aberdeen. In 1995 her family moved back to Kumasi, Ghana where she spent most of her formative years.

Asiedu attended St. Leo International School, and in 5th grade moved to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Primary School and then KNUST Junior High School. After junior high school, she was accepted into her first choice senior high program - Holy Child Secondary School - where she studied Science and as a top performer, became a member of her school's National Science and Math Quiz Team. After passing the West African Senior School Certificate Examination, Mercy was accepted into KNUST Medical School. Concurrently, she had been nominated by her senior high school for the Zawadi Africa Educational fund, founded by Dr. Susan Mboya to provide African girls with scholarships to study in the United States, and which was modeled after the Mboya-Kennedy Airlift. After a series of interviews, followed by SATs and college applications, Asiedu was accepted into the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA on a full scholarship as a Renaissance and Global Scholar.

Asiedu obtained her Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering degree (with a minor in business) with distinction in 2014 from the University of Rochester. She studied abroad during her junior year for six months at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. She went on to obtain her Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University (with a certificate in Global Health) in 2019, studying under Prof. Nimmi Ramanujam. While at Duke she developed and clinically validated mobile-connected imaging devices [1][2][3] and machine learning algorithms [4][5][6] for cervical cancer screening, for which she received several awards. This work is currently being commercialized by a new startup, the Calla Health Foundation. In 2019 she was awarded a Schmidt Science Postdoctoral Fellowship and conducted her postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) where she worked on various machine learning for health research projects [7][8][9]. While at MIT, she was part of the MIT Jameel Clinic and worked with the Center for Ultrasound Research and Translation under Dr. Anthony Samir, and the Clinical Machine Learning group under Prof. David Sontag.

Career

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As of August 2022, Asiedu is a machine learning research scientist at Google Research, based out of San Francisco, CA. She is the co-founder (and previous co-CEO) of GAPhealth Technologies Inc which she founded with Bai Bintou Kaira. She is a previous co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of the Calla Health Foundation.

Asiedu interned at the Mayo clinic as a summer undergraduate research fellow with Mohammed Mehrmohammadi and Mostafa Fatemi. While in undergrad at the University of Rochester she interned for several semesters in Prof. Amy Lerner's biomechanics lab. During her semester abroad at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne Australia, she also interned in Prof. Marcus Pandy's biomechanic's lab.

Personal Life

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Asiedu married Dr. Jonah Nathan Gollub, a physicist, in 2019 and they welcomed a son, Etan Gollub in 2021.

TEDx Talk

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In 2020, Asiedu gave a Tedx talk at Duke University - The Invisible organ: Reimagining Gynecology. That year she was also invited to TEDMED Boston, to speak about the Calla Health Foundation.

Media Features

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Awards and Recognition

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Year Award
2021 McGovern Tech for Humanity Changemaker Prize
2020 NIH SBIR Grant
1st runner-up, MIT 100K Accelerate Business Competition
Winner, MIT Sloan Health Business Pitch Competition
2019 CUGH/Wasserheit Young Leader in Global Health Award
Winner, Lemelson-MIT Graduate Student “Cure it” Award
2nd runner-up, CISCO Global Problem Solver Challenge
Schmidt Science Post-Doctoral Fellowship
2018 Duke Global Health Doctoral Scholar
Velji Emerging Leader in Global Health Award
MKS Instruments Research Excellence Travel Award
Conference Scholar, International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) Education (2018)
Women Leaders in Global Health Travel Award
2017 Conference Travel Award, Women in Machine Learning
VentureWell Eteam Grant
Winner, Duke Health Innovation Jam Shark Tank
2014 Pratt-Gardner Fellowship, Duke University Graduate School
2010 Renaissance and Global Merit Full-tuition and Expenses Scholarship
Awardee, Zawadi Africa Education Fund

References

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  1. ^ Asiedu, Mercy Nyamewaa; Agudogo, Júlia; Krieger, Marlee S.; Miros, Robert; Proeschold-Bell, Rae Jean; Schmitt, John W.; Ramanujam, Nimmi (2017-05-31). "Design and preliminary analysis of a vaginal inserter for speculum-free cervical cancer screening". PLOS ONE. 12 (5): e0177782. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1277782A. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0177782. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5451045. PMID 28562669.
  2. ^ Lam, Christopher T.; Mueller, Jenna; Asma, Betsy; Asiedu, Mercy; Krieger, Marlee S.; Chitalia, Rhea; Dahl, Denali; Taylor, Peyton; Schmitt, John W.; Ramanujam, Nimmi (2018-02-09). "An integrated strategy for improving contrast, durability, and portability of a Pocket Colposcope for cervical cancer screening and diagnosis". PLOS ONE. 13 (2): e0192530. Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1392530L. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0192530. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5806883. PMID 29425225.
  3. ^ Asiedu, Mercy N.; Agudogo, Júlia S.; Dotson, Mary E.; Skerrett, Erica; Krieger, Marlee S.; Lam, Christopher T.; Agyei, Doris; Amewu, Juliet; Asah-Opoku, Kwaku; Huchko, Megan; Schmitt, John W.; Samba, Ali; Srofenyoh, Emmanuel; Ramanujam, Nirmala (2020-10-06). "A novel speculum-free imaging strategy for visualization of the internal female lower reproductive system". Scientific Reports. 10 (1): 16570. Bibcode:2020NatSR..1016570A. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-72219-9. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 7538883. PMID 33024146.
  4. ^ Asiedu, Mercy N.; Skerrett, Erica; Sapiro, Guillermo; Ramanujam, Nirmala (2020). "Combining multiple contrasts for improving machine learning-based classification of cervical cancers with a low-cost point-of-care Pocket colposcope". 2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC). Vol. 2020. pp. 1148–1151. doi:10.1109/EMBC44109.2020.9175858. ISBN 978-1-7281-1990-8. PMC 8359705. PMID 33018190.
  5. ^ Asiedu, Mercy Nyamewaa; Simhal, Anish; Lam, Christopher T.; Mueller, Jenna; Chaudhary, Usamah; Schmitt, John W.; Sapiro, Guillermo; Ramanujam, Nimmi (2018-02-13). "Image processing and machine learning techniques to automate diagnosis of Lugol's iodine cervigrams for a low-cost point-of-care digital colposcope". In Erickson, David; Ozcan, Aydogan; Levitz, David (eds.). Optics and Biophotonics in Low-Resource Settings IV. Vol. 10485. SPIE. pp. 14–23. Bibcode:2018SPIE10485E..08A. doi:10.1117/12.2282792. ISBN 978-1-5106-1455-0. S2CID 65751870.
  6. ^ Asiedu, M. N.; Simhal, A.; Chaudhary, U.; Mueller, J. L.; Lam, C. T.; Schmitt, J. W.; Venegas, G.; Sapiro, G.; Ramanujam, N. (2019). "Development of Algorithms for Automated Detection of Cervical Pre-Cancers With a Low-Cost, Point-of-Care, Pocket Colposcope". IEEE Transactions on Bio-Medical Engineering. 66 (8): 2306–2318. doi:10.1109/TBME.2018.2887208. PMC 6581620. PMID 30575526.
  7. ^ Asiedu, Mercy N.; Benjamin, Alex R.; Singh, Vivek K.; Wang, Shuhang; Wu, Kevin; Samir, Anthony E.; Kumar, Viksit S. (2022-04-04). "A generative adversarial network for ultrasound signal enhancement by transforming low-voltage beamformed radio frequency data to high-voltage data". In Ruiter, Nicole V.; Bottenus, Nick (eds.). Medical Imaging 2022: Ultrasonic Imaging and Tomography. Vol. 12038. SPIE. pp. 246–254. Bibcode:2022SPIE12038E..0XA. doi:10.1117/12.2612686. ISBN 978-1-5106-4951-4. S2CID 246985381.
  8. ^ Wang, Shuhang; Singh, Vivek Kumar; Benjamin, Alex; Asiedu, Mercy; Kalafi, Elham Yousef; Cheah, Eugene; Kumar, Viksit; Samir, Anthony (2021-01-23), Network-Agnostic Knowledge Transfer for Medical Image Segmentation, arXiv:2101.09560
  9. ^ Song, Zhiye; Asiedu, Mercy; Wang, Shuhang; Li, Qian; Ozturk, Arinc; Mittal, Vipasha; Schoen, Scott; Ramaswamy, Srinath; Pierce, Theodore T.; Samir, Anthony E.; Eldar, Yonina C.; Chandrakasan, Anantha; Kumar, Viksit (2023-09-30). "Memory-efficient low-compute segmentation algorithms for bladder-monitoring smart ultrasound devices". Scientific Reports. 13 (1): 16450. Bibcode:2023NatSR..1316450S. doi:10.1038/s41598-023-42000-9. ISSN 2045-2322. PMC 10542811. PMID 37777523.