"I didn't start this podcast to explain AI in medicine from the outside. I started it because I'm inside it: running the models, reading the scans, asking the researchers what they actually found."
Rhea Morani is a researcher and student at Carnegie Vanguard High School in Houston whose work sits at the exact intersection this podcast explores: machine learning, medical imaging, and the question of what happens when an algorithm gets there first.
She has built and trained machine learning models for automated detection of brain hemorrhages on CT scans. Furthermore, she has programmed computer vision models for glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy detection using a mobile AI retina tracker. For her work, she has been honored with the Sigma Xi 1st Place award from 50+ Medicine and Health projects at the Science and Engineering Fair of Houston 2025 and the 2nd place Dilorio Foundation Award from 40+ Medicine and Health projects at the Science and Engineering Fair of Houston 2024. She has co-authored peer-reviewed publications on topics ranging from pediatric cancer survivors to gallbladder neuroendocrine neoplasms, and has presented at the UT System AI Symposium in Healthcare, the International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, and the SABI 2025 Annual Conference, among others.
Most recently, she designed a computational aptamer discovery pipeline identifying EGFR-binding RNA sequences for targeted cancer therapy and early detection, presented at the Science and Engineering Fair of Houston 2026.
As someone deeply interested in both AI and medicine, she created this platform to bridge the gap between technology and human health. Through this podcast, she aims to make complex innovations understandable while also questioning their impact — because while AI has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, it also raises concerns about privacy, bias, and trust. The future of healthcare shouldn't just be advanced. It should be ethical and accessible.
This show is not a hobby that sits beside the research. It is an extension of it, a place to ask the questions that don't fit in an abstract.
Shah R, Yedururi S, Morani RA, et al. Cancer Imaging.
Joshi TP, Taylor RM, Morani R, Orengo IF. Dermatol Surg.
Bhosale H, Shah R, Morani R, et al. Abdominal Radiology, September 2025.
Ramani NS, Morani RA, Krishnan B. Diagnostic Cytopathology. 2024;52(5):E116–E119.