Lidia Flores Awarded 2024 Google Fellowship
Informatics Ph.D. student Lidia Flores receives prestigious Google Fellowship for her work in health and bioscience.
Lidia Flores has a passion for health informatics, which has led her to explore how medical information is disseminated online. As an informatics Ph.D. student in UC Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS), advised by ICS and Medical School Professor Sean Young, Flores is assessing the accuracy of health information disseminated from large language models. If you ask an AI chatbot a medical-related question, can you trust the response?
Recognizing the significance of this work, Google named Flores one of 11 recipients of its prestigious Ph.D. Fellowship in the area of health and bioscience. Google’s Ph.D. Fellowship Program recognizes “outstanding graduate students doing exceptional and innovative research,” and in the area of health and bioscience, it looks to support work that has the potential to improve people’s lives. The fellowship includes full tuition and fees for up to three years, a stipend for living and travel expenses, and support from a Google Research Mentor.
“I’m excited to have Google’s support and I am looking forward to collaborating on research together,” says Flores. “As large language models become increasingly popular, AI chatbots may be utilized to disseminate clinical knowledge or assist in diagnoses. I’m interested in taking a multifaceted approach to understanding how these models may influence health-related decision-making processes.”
Congratulations, Lidia!
— Shani Murray