Biography of Dr. Meenalosini Vimal Cruz

Assistant Professor, Department of Information Technology | Founder & Director, Somatic Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) | Georgia Southern University

Dr. Meenalosini Vimal Cruz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Technology at Georgia Southern University's Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing, a position she has held since July 2021. She is the founder and director of the Somatic Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), which she established to advance holistic health and brain-related research and to foster interdepartmental collaboration across the university. With more than fifteen years of research experience and a decade of teaching experience in computer science, Dr. Vimal Cruz has built a research-active, student-centered career devoted to advancing artificial intelligence for healthcare and to preparing students for the evolving demands of the data science field. Through SAIL, she has mentored more than forty research students in AI-related research activities and worked on 26 student co-authored publications with undergraduate and graduate student researchers. At SAIL laboratory, she is currently mentoring a Ph. D scholar under presidential scholarship support and a Graduate student.

Dr. Vimal Cruz earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science Engineering from Veltech University, India, in 2014, with a dissertation on computer-aided malignancy diagnosis in digital mammograms. She holds a Master of Technology in Computer and Information Technology, completed with distinction and a Gold Medal, from Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, India (2008), as well as a Master of Philosophy and a Master of Science in Physics, specializing in Geomagnetism and Astrophysics respectively.

Dr. Vimal Cruz has co-authored more than fifty peer-reviewed publications, comprising over twenty international journal articles and roughly thirty conference proceedings papers, in addition to three book chapters published internationally. Her journal contributions include papers in high-impact venues such as the IEEE Internet of Things Journal, IEEE Access, and Elsevier's Computer Science Review, as well as publications in the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, SN Computer Science, Multimedia Tools and Applications, and Applied Sciences, among others. She also has co-authored a book on explainable AI in healthcare with her Ph. D scholar which got accepted for publication with River Publishers. Several additional manuscripts are currently under review in journals such as MDPI Brain Sciences, Informatics and Health, and Frontiers in Oncology. Dr. Vimal Cruz has been the recipient of eighteen internal and external research grants, serving as Principal Investigator on the majority of them, including National Institutes of Health IDeA/NH-INBRE awards supporting AI based health monitoring and BCI assisted healthcare research, as well as recent external grants from Georgia Southern Foundation and ALG Transformative Grant program.

Her research centers on Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology, computer vision, machine learning and deep learning, natural language processing, and data science, with a particular emphasis on applying these tools to healthcare. She has developed computer aided diagnostic systems that use advanced image processing and deep learning techniques to analyze and classify medical images, including mammograms, MRI brain scans, and dermatological images, and she conducts BCI research examining brain wave activity in relation to behavioral and consciousness related activities. Her portfolio further extends to natural language processing applications such as chatbot development and to interdisciplinary projects spanning computer vision, data analytics, and deep learning techniques. She has delivered more than 18 research talks as invited speaker, including a Grand Rounds talk at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine. She has been recognized with a university level team Award of Excellence in Collective Impact, and she has been mentoring a student club called Tech Developer Association club since 2022.