Project Description

Recently, four high school students from the Youth STEAM Initiative—Yuanheng Mao, Lillian Yang, Stephen Yang, and Ethan Shao—used AI models to objectively measure the effectiveness of chronic pain treatment by analyzing motion sensor data collected by patients, using a smartphone app that they created. They also collaborated with the Massachusetts General Hospital, receiving guidance from Dr. Shiqian Shen and collecting patient movement data. This provides physicians with an objective, data-driven approach to determine whether treatments truly improve patients' daily lives. Their research paper, "DETECT: Data-Driven Evaluation of Treatments Enabled by Classification Transformers," was accepted by the international conference IEEE ICDM UGHS 2025 and presented orally. In addition, the team received the Best Paper Runner Up Award among all the submissions in the Undergraduate and High School Symposium.