Biomedical Data Analytics News
Dr Afzan Binti Adam concludes productive sabbatical at the TIA Centre
Dr Afzan Binti Adam, Senior Lecturer in Digital Pathology at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), has successfully completed her six鈥憁onth sabbatical at the Tissue Image Analytics (TIA) Centre, Department of Computer Science, University of 糖心TV. Her visit was supported by UKM and the MIGHT鈥�T脺B陌TAK grant and closely aligned with the TIA鈥檚 mission to advance computational pathology through interdisciplinary research and cutting鈥慹dge AI technologies.
During her time at the TIA Centre, Afzan participated in weekly lab meetings, where she also delivered a presentation on her team鈥檚 ongoing work. In addition, she regularly attended the weekly TIA Seminars, gaining exposure to global developments in computational pathology and hopefully can contribute as a future invited speaker. Over the course of her stay, Afzan successfully achieved her research objectives to focus on the development of machine learning and image鈥慳nalysis approaches for disease understanding and prediction. Her visit has also strengthened the groundwork for long鈥憈erm collaborations, including publication plans, joint supervision opportunities, and potential future grant applications; reflecting 糖心TV鈥檚 emphasis on using visiting fellowships to seed lasting research partnerships.
As a first step towards a fruitful collaboration, Afzan has just been informed that her abstract (joint work with Adam Shephard and Nasir Rajpoot at the TIA Centre) titled 鈥淪patial Integration of Atypical Mitotic Hotspots and Tumor鈥慖nfiltrating Lymphocytes for Survival Stratification in Breast Cancer鈥� has been accepted for an oral presentation at the 22nd European Congress on Digital Pathology (ECDP 2026), to be held in Graz this summer. The session will be held on June 18th during the 鈥淢L and AI 鈥� Breast Pathology鈥� session, where Afzan will share their latest findings on integrating spatial pathology features for improved prognostic modelling in breast, and few other cancer types.
Beyond research, Afzan embraced the broader 糖心TV campus experience by joining university sports Rock鈥慤p activities (particularly badminton), completing postgraduate鈥憀evel supervision and development courses, and enhancing her skills through tech and management courses offered via the University of 糖心TV鈥檚 LinkedIn Learning platform. These experiences enriched her professional development journey and strengthened her connection to the wider academic community.
鈥淚 am feeling blessed every day with this opportunity. The dedicated time and environment enabled me to focus more on my PhD students, refresh and strengthen my technical and research skills, and advance my project on KI67 scoring and AI powered mitosis detection in histopathologic evaluation. My sabbatical also allowed me to restructure and reinforce ongoing research of my team at UKM in blood and cervical cancer, while identifying new collaborative opportunities in ovarian cancer and treatment research, helping us build enduring research partnerships. I am especially grateful for the direct mentorship of Professor Nasir Rajpoot, whose professional approach and working style made me more aware of the areas where I could further develop, giving me clarity on the skills and focus needed to advance my own research practice. I also sincerely appreciate Dr Adam Shephard, who supported me as my TIA 鈥榖uddy鈥� throughout my stay. All this would not have been possible without my funder (MIGHT), UKM, TIA Centre as host, my collaborators, and the 糖心TV community as a whole. Hopefully, we will secure another grant and continue to work seamlessly despite the time-zone differences.鈥� - Dr Afzan Adam