Vijaya B. Kolachalama PhD, FAHA
Associate Professor, Computational Biomedicine
Assistant Professor, Computing & Data Sciences Administration
72 East Concord Street | (617) 358-7253vkola@bu.edu
Sections
Computational Biomedicine
Centers
Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute
Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research
Biography
We are a highly interdisciplinary research group, bringing together trainees and scientists from computer science, neuroscience, bioinformatics, physics, computing and data sciences, electrical and computer engineering, and medicine. We actively collaborate with clinicians and domain experts across diverse specialties and institutions globally. This unique convergence of disciplines has enabled us to publish across the full spectrum of scientific inquiry, from top-tier journals like Nature Medicine to premier computer science venues such as the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). Our mission is to create methods to fit the science and not make science fit the methods. Together, we are advancing impactful science at the intersection of AI and human health.
Education
BS, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India
PhD, University of Southampton, UK
Publications
Ibrahim A, Kolachalama VB, Abuelsamen T, Mekki O, Takayama S, Wynne BM, Chemaly E, Alsaleem A, Revelo M, Sauer L, Vitale A, Thomas A, Pasaye M, Schmitz-Valckenberg S, Gregory M, Bernstein PS, Al-Rabadi L. Noninvasive optical coherence tomography biomarker for Alport syndrome, COL4-related focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, and COL4 variant interpretation. Kidney Int. 2026 Jul 24. PMID: 42498059.
Published on 6/17/2026Krishnan L, Gunasekaran G, Dhore T, Lauinger A, Kolachalama V, Pappu S. Leveraging artificial intelligence for analysis of the gut microbiome for dementia diagnosis: a scoping review and discussion. Front Dement. 2026; 5:1865441. PMID: 42389671.
Published on 4/16/2026Ahangaran M, Jia S, Chitalia S, Athavale A, Francis JM, O'Donnell MW, Bavi SR, Gupta UD, Kolachalama VB. Performance of open-source large language models on nephrology self-assessment program. medRxiv. 2026 Apr 16. PMID: 42064960.
Published on 4/8/2026Xu L, Kefella Y, Zhang Y, Conrad RD, Anderson KE, Krysan K, Liu G, Kane E, Pennycuick A, Merrick DT, Janes SM, Reid ME, Burks EJ, Billatos E, Mazzilli SA, Kolachalama VB, Beane JE. Attention-based deep learning for analysis of pathology images and gene expression data in lung squamous premalignant lesions. Genome Med. 2026 Apr 08; 18(1). PMID: 41952176.
Published on 4/4/2026Lteif D, Jia S, Bit S, Kaliaev A, Mian AZ, Small JE, Mangaleswaran B, Plummer BA, Bargal SA, Au R, Kolachalama VB. Vision-language framework for multi-sequence brain magnetic resonance imaging. medRxiv. 2026 Apr 04. PMID: 41959770.
Published on 3/23/2026Kowshik SS, Jasodanand VH, Bellitti M, Puducheri S, Xu L, Liu Y, Saichandran KS, Dwyer BC, Gabelle A, Hao H, Kedar S, Murman DL, O'Shea SA, Saint-Hilaire MH, Samudra NP, Sartor EA, Swaminathan A, Taraschenko O, Yuan J, Au R, Kolachalama VB. Domain-adapted language model using reinforcement learning for various dementias. medRxiv. 2026 Mar 23. PMID: 41929317.
Published on 3/16/2026Pinheiro A, Karjadi C, Tripodis Y, Kolachalama VB, Lunetta K, Demissie S, Liu C, Au R, Mohammed S. Predicting cognitive impairment using novel functional features of spatial proximity and circularity in the digital clock drawing test. medRxiv. 2026 Mar 16. PMID: 41891039.
Published on 2/13/2026Decker JW, BaniHani D, HonShideler C, Lotfollahzadeh S, Wu Wong DJ, Farber A, Siracuse JJ, Idrees N, Dember L, Bader M, Ganguli S, Kolachalama V, Shazly T, Chitalia VC. Intravascular Ultrasound is More Accurate Than Angiography in Arteriovenous Vascular Access Lesions. Kidney360. 2026 Feb 13. PMID: 41686504.
Published on 2/7/2026Jia S, Bit S, Jasodanand VH, Liu Y, Kolachalama VB. Agentic memory-augmented retrieval and evidence grounding for medical question-answering tasks. Int J Med Inform. 2026 Jun 01; 212:106339. PMID: 41713127.
Published on 1/12/2026Shazly T, Eberth JF, Kostelnik CJ, Uline MJ, Chitalia VC, Spinale FG, Alshareef A, Kolachalama VB. Correction to "Hydrophilic Coating Microstructure Mediates Acute Drug Transfer in Drug-Coated Balloon Therapy". ACS Appl Bio Mater. 2026 Feb 02; 9(3):1819. PMID: 41521858.
Media Mentions
Published on 6/5/2025
Can Large Language Models Eliminate Biases in Health Care?
Published on 8/28/2024
AI tool improves diagnostic accuracy for dementia by 26%
Published on 7/11/2024
AI Can Diagnose 10 Types of Dementia
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Diagnosing different forms of dementia now possible using AI, study finds
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Diagnosing dementia is complicated. An algorithm could change that
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AI Predicts Dementia Risk from Speech Years in Advance
Published on 9/19/2023
Published on 8/10/2023
From mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's: Predicting risk
Published on 8/4/2023
BU Researchers Look To Quantify The Risk Of Alzheimer's Disease Progression
Published on 12/13/2022
Best of The Brink 2022: BU’s Most-Read Science and Research Stories
View full list of 29 media mentions.