Mina Nouredanesh, PhD

Research summary

The population of older adults in Canada is projected to grow significantly, leading to an increase in complex age-related conditions (CACs), including but not limited to injurious falls, symptoms of Parkinson's disease (e.g., freezing of gait), and behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. 

While there are currently no cures for these conditions, early identification of individual-level risk factors offers a promising pathway for guiding precise intervention strategies that may delay onset or mitigate their impact. 

To address this, Dr. Nouredanesh’s multidisciplinary research program leverages AI to:

1. predict and assess the prognosis of CACs using multimodal health data (Research Theme 1), and
2. develop personalized technologies for the day-to-day management of CACs (Research Theme 2). 

The program's research outputs are expected to enhance the functioning and quality of life for older adults and their caregivers.

Keywords

• Aging and complex age-related conditions
• Artificial intelligence for health
• Free-living digital biomarkers
• Longitudinal and multimodal health data analysis
• Neurodegenerative diseases
• Rehabilitation
• Wearable technologies

Dr. Nouredanesh is an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Max Rady College of Medicine and holds a Canada Research Chair in AI for Complex Health Data (Tier II). 

She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University's School of Rehabilitation Science, where her research focused on machine learning-based analysis of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging data to identify early markers of falls. 

Dr. Nouredanesh's doctoral work in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo also centered on developing AI models to extract novel free-living digital biomarkers from wearable sensors data for gait monitoring and assessing the risk of falls in older adults. 

Beyond her primary focus on AI-powered tools for complex age-related conditions, Dr. Nouredanesh has made novel technical contributions to diverse healthcare projects spanning visuomotor neuroscience, medical image (e.g., retinal, X-ray) processing, and robotics. 

Her research contributions have yielded multiple publications in leading clinical and methodological journals, as well as presentations at top-tier engineering and computer science conferences. 

She has established strong collaborations with world-renowned researchers and clinicians across Canada, the USA, the UK, and Germany and serves as a reviewer for top-tier journals. 

Dr. Nouredanesh is the recipient of awards from the AGE-WELL NCE Inc, Vector Institute for Al, Waterloo Al Institute, and McMaster Institute for Research on Aging.

Education

Postdoctoral Fellowship, School of Rehabilitation Science, McMaster University (2024)

PhD, Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo (2022)

MASc, Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo (2016)

BSc, Department of Electrical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (2013)