The University of California, Davis, Department of Computer Science is launching a new AI for Health Initiative to coordinate research at the intersection of computer science and medicine, the university announced. The effort, led by Professor Vladimir Filkov with Chair Dipak Ghosal serving as co-director, aims to connect researchers and foster responsible AI development in clinical settings. It formalizes a growing collaboration between computer scientists based in Davis and UC Davis Health faculty in Sacramento.
"Our goal is to create a home for responsible AI use for health - a place where people can find one another, share what works and turn strong individual projects into something larger," Filkov said. "Computer science is the starting point, but the real opportunity is in building deep partnerships with physicians and researchers at UC Davis Health."
Why a formal hub matters
Filkov had been building such partnerships through his AI for Health Lab. Over time, he realized multiple faculty across the department were tackling similar problems, mentoring the same graduate students, and drawing on shared expertise - but without a formal structure to coordinate their work. He approached Ghosal with an idea to change that. Ghosal, who also co-directs the AI for Science & Research center, recognized the potential.
"[The intersection of] AI and health is a really fertile area, and we have a lot of faculty working in this multidisciplinary field," Ghosal said. "We can actually have something very concrete and tangible within the department."
Focus areas and educational work
The initiative's early priorities include multimodal AI for health, synthetic health data, and digital twins - technologies designed to help researchers understand complex diseases, improve clinical workflows, and build tools that are both useful and trustworthy. The initiative will also develop educational programs, including talks, workshops, and project-matching efforts, for master's and Ph.D. students in computer science as well as medical students interested in computational research.
Filkov emphasized the stakes by pointing to real examples of error in medical AI. At a recent conference, he saw demonstrations of medical dictation software that hallucinated or introduced errors as often as 20 percent of the time. "In medicine, an AI error is not just a typo," Filkov said. "It can change the meaning of a clinical note, affect a decision or create risk for a patient. To make these systems safe, we need to understand not just what they do, but why they do it. That is a computer science problem, and it is also a health problem."
Building for the long term
During its first year, the AI for Health Initiative will focus on listening and connecting - bringing people together, mapping shared needs, developing resources, and identifying funding opportunities. Filkov and Ghosal eventually aim to grow the initiative into a campuswide center or institute that strengthens UC Davis's leadership in responsible AI for health. Ghosal is also co-director of the UC Davis AI Center in Engineering, which supports faculty-led efforts to incorporate AI into disciplines including health. Researchers like Professors Sam King, Ian Davidson, Xin Liu, Kwan-Liu Ma, and Lifu Huang are already part of the department working at this intersection.
Why this matters for science and research professionals
For researchers working at the intersection of AI for Healthcare and computer science, this initiative creates a rare formal scaffold for multidisciplinary work. Addressing the black-box problem of AI in medicine - making systems explainable and trustworthy - is a computer science challenge with direct patient care consequences. Professionals in this space should watch for the initiative's project-matching and funding opportunity efforts, which could surface new collaboration channels and grant targets that aren't visible through traditional department boundaries alone.
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