Dr. Laleh Seyyed-Kalantari is a distinguished computer scientist at the forefront of responsible artificial intelligence research with transformative applications in healthcare. She currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at York University's Lassonde School of Engineering, where she founded and directs the Responsible AI Lab. Prior to her faculty appointment, Dr. Seyyed-Kalantari completed a prestigious NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Vector Institute and the University of Toronto from 2019 to 2022, conducting research under the supervision of Dr. Marzyeh Ghassemi at the Healthy ML Lab. She earned her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from McMaster University in 2017, completing her doctoral work under the guidance of Dr. Mohamed Bakr with co-supervision from Dr. Natalia Nikolova, establishing her foundational expertise in computational methods for medical applications.
Dr. Seyyed-Kalantari's groundbreaking research has fundamentally advanced the field of AI fairness in medical imaging, particularly through her seminal 2020 work that revealed systematic racial, gender, and socioeconomic biases in chest X-ray classification algorithms. This pivotal research, featured in major technology publications including Venture Beat and Neural Net News, demonstrated significant performance disparities across demographic groups, catalyzing critical discussions about equitable deployment of AI diagnostics in healthcare settings. Her scholarly impact is evidenced by over 2,400 citations on Google Scholar, reflecting the substantial influence of her contributions to identifying and mitigating bias in AI systems. Dr. Seyyed-Kalantari's research portfolio extends beyond bias detection to developing innovative solutions for trustworthy AI, including generative models for medical imaging and foundation models for drug discovery applications.
As a recognized thought leader in AI policy and ethics, Dr. Seyyed-Kalantari serves in the CIFAR and Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute's AI Insights for Policymakers Program (2024-2025), shaping responsible AI governance frameworks. She has been invited to present her work at premier venues including the Toronto Machine Learning Summit, Stanford AIMI Journal Club, and specialized conferences for West African healthcare professionals. Her scientific excellence has been recognized through prestigious awards including the Google Research Scholar Program award (2024) and the York University Research Award for Outstanding Early Career and the York University Research Award for Significant Knowledge Mobilization & Impact (2025). As a Vector Institute faculty affiliate and director of the Responsible AI Lab, Dr. Seyyed-Kalantari continues to pioneer robust frameworks for evaluating AI fairness while advancing the frontiers of generative models for medical diagnostics and therapeutic applications.
