Principal Investigator
Data Science Institute
Director of the Information Systems Program
The Graduate School of Business Administration
Bar-Ilan University
alon.bartal@biu.ac.il

Research Focus: Kathleen’s research integrates computational psychiatry, clinical psychology, and AI-driven modeling to study trauma and mental health outcomes. She co-leads the PeriGNNosis project, developing knowledge-graph–based graph neural networks for detecting childbirth-related PTSD. Her work bridges clinical expertise with advanced data science methods, aiming to improve early detection and intervention strategies for maternal mental health.

Affiliation: MBA student

Role in Lab: Master’s thesis student

Research Focus: Knowledge-graph–based cancer risk prediction using LLM-assisted graph construction and geospatial/demographic features. Ofek’s thesis builds a GraphRAG-style pipeline linking places, populations, and clinical indicators to model cancer risk.

Affiliation: MSc Student, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU)

Role in Lab: Master’s thesis student (co-supervised with Prof. Gilad Ravid)

Research Focus: Shahar’s thesis explored what drives celebrities to engage with users on social media. Using methods from social network analysis and computational modeling, she investigated the structural and behavioral factors that drive high-profile accounts to engage with followers, and how these interactions influence community dynamics and user visibility.

Affiliation: MBA Student, Bar-Ilan University

Role in Lab: Master’s thesis student

Research Focus: Alice is an active thesis student working on the CB-PTSD project. Her research focuses on developing Large Language Models (LLMs), knowledge graph construction, and graph representation learning by analyzing social media posts of post-partum women. By building heterogeneous graph models, she contributes to advancing psychiatric approaches for early detection of childbirth-related PTSD.

Affiliation: MBA student: MBA Student, Bar-Ilan University

Role in Lab: Master’s thesis student

Research Focus: Orni is an active thesis student working on the use of social media data to study GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA). Her research focuses on leveraging natural language processing and AI methods to identify reasons why patients discontinue GLP-1RA treatment, with the goal of contributing to better understanding of real-world medication adherence patterns.

Affiliation: MBA Student, Bar-Ilan University

Role in Lab: Master’s thesis student

Research Focus: Priel is conducting his thesis in collaboration with Sheba Medical Center, focusing on the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) to detect suicide risk. His research applies methods from natural language processing, information networks, and predictive modeling to identify early warning signals of suicidal ideation, with the goal of supporting clinical decision-making and preventive interventions.

Affiliation: MBA Student, Bar-Ilan University

Role in Lab: Master’s thesis student

Research Focus: Netta is part of the ThinkAI project, which develops educational simulations to strengthen AI literacy and critical thinking among students. Her work explores how interactive, scenario-based learning environments can help learners build competencies in generative AI, decision-making, and responsible use of emerging technologies.

Affiliation: MBA Student, Bar-Ilan University

Role in Lab: Master’s thesis student

Research Focus: Aiha is working on the Food Informatics project, which applies information systems and AI methods to the study of nutrition and food-related data. Aiha's research focuses on developing computational approaches for analyzing dietary information, consumer behavior, and health outcomes, with the goal of advancing data-driven insights in food and health informatics.

Affiliation: MBA Student, Bar-Ilan University

Role in the lab: Former master's thesis student

Research Focus: Applications of AI in healthcare analytics, with an emphasis on clinical text mining and graph-based methods.

Affiliation: MBA Student, Bar-Ilan University

Role in Lab: Former master’s thesis student

Research Focus: Maor’s research was part of the ODO (Opioid Drug Ontology) project, a collaboration with Prof. Stephan Schürer (University of Miami). His work focused on developing ontology-driven approaches for structuring and analyzing opioid-related biomedical data, integrating graph-based representations to support drug discovery and informatics applications.

Affiliation: MBA Student, Bar-Ilan University

Role in Lab: Former master’s thesis student

Research Focus: Odelya’s research was part of the CB-PTSD project, which integrates AI, Machine learning (ML), and Large Language Models (LLMs) to detect childbirth-related PTSD. Her work focused on developing LLM-based ML model from narrative and clinical data, contributing to early models that connect psychological constructs with computational features for improved risk prediction.