TIA Centre: News
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Hafsa Akebli's Research Visit at the TIA Centre
Hafsa Akebli, a second-year PhD student at the University of Udine, Italy, recently completed a two-month research visit at the Tissue Image Analytics (TIA) Centre. Her doctoral research focuses on applying deep learning to histopathological images for disease pattern detection, mainly addressing classification and survival prediction tasks across different cancer types, including Gleason grading in prostate cancer. Before starting her PhD, Hafsa obtained her degree in Industrial Management Engineering from Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Morocco and gained two years of professional experience at UM6P and L’Oréal Morocco.
During her time at the TIA Centre, Hafsa worked under the supervision of Professor Nasir Rajpoot and Dr Adam Shephard on developing a multimodal oncology agent that integrates histology, genomic, and clinical data, together with information retrieved from external biomedical knowledge bases such as OncoKB and PubMed, to support reasoning and report generation for IDH1 mutation prediction in low-grade glioma.
During these two months, Hafsa also took part in the lab meetings and the TIA Seminar Series organized by the Centre, which featured talks from both internal researchers and invited external speakers. These sessions were an excellent opportunity to discover the ongoing projects within the lab and to learn about emerging topics and recent advances in computational pathology. They also helped her integrate into the team and feel part of the TIA environment.
“It was a very enriching experience to collaborate with Nasir and Adam,” Hafsa shared. “I really liked the way they always found good directions and ideas to push the work further; their perspectives were very motivating. I also found it inspiring how Nasir brings both his academic and business perspectives when guiding the work, always linking research ideas to their practical relevance and real-world impact.
The TIA Centre is a large and advanced research lab, and it was an interesting experience to be part of such an environment during this period. It was also an opportunity to discover a new country, culture, and academic setting. Overall, it was a very positive experience both professionally and personally, and I would be happy to collaborate with Nasir and Adam again in the future.”
By Hafsa Akebli
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