Soodabeh (Soo) Ghaffari, a UC San Francisco–UC Berkeley graduate student, was named an inaugural UC Noyce Graduate Student Fellow, part of a new program designed to support the next generation of researchers in digital innovation.
Ghaffari, a student in the joint-campus program in bioengineering, develops machine learning methods for biomedical data, with a focus on clinical natural language processing. She says this fellowship provides her with more independence and space to explore building AI systems for mental health that are accurate, reliable, transparent, and trustworthy.
“When I first got the news about the UC Noyce Fellowship, I honestly had to read the email twice—it was such a surreal and meaningful moment,” said Ghaffari. “Knowing that others believe in my research and its potential gives me a renewed sense of confidence and momentum as I pursue my PhD work on developing robust and interpretable language models for mental health scoring. I am incredibly grateful for this support and for all the mentors, colleagues, and friends who have shaped my academic journey—from Sharif University and Penn State to Princeton, UC Berkeley, and UCSF—and especially Dr. Reza Abbasi-Asl, Dr. Hao Li, and Dr. Zemer Gitai for their mentorship, encouragement, and belief in me along the way.”
Each fellow selected represents one of the five campuses that make up the UC Noyce Initiative: UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC San Francisco, and UC Santa Barbara. The students will receive up to $150,000 over two years to support their research.
“This inaugural cohort represents exactly what we hoped to see when we created this program — talented emerging researchers pursuing ambitious ideas with the potential to make a real difference,” said Bryan Kerner, executive director of the UC Noyce Initiative. “Supporting the next generation of researchers is essential to advancing these fields. We are excited to invest in these five fellows, connect them with the broader UC Noyce community and see where their work takes them.”