Children’s National & Virginia Tech Pediatric Health AI Innovation Hub

The Pediatric Health AI Innovation Hub is a strategic collaboration between Children’s National Hospital and Virginia Tech, uniting world-class clinical and computational expertise to transform child and adolescent health.

Anchored by top-tier institutions — Children’s National, consistently ranked among the top 10 pediatric hospitals, and Virginia Tech, a national leader in AI, engineering, and translational biomedical research — the Hub addresses the critical gap in pediatric representation within medical AI.

Our mission is to accelerate health innovation from childhood through adulthood by pioneering AI-driven tools for early diagnosis, precision care and real-world implementation — especially for rare diseases and underserved populations. Through our growing partnership, we are building a national hub for impactful pediatric AI.

Our Center empowers AI innovation that directly benefits pediatric patients and their families.

 

What We Do

Cutting-edge AI Models

We develop cutting-edge AI models tailored to children’s unique physiology and data needs.

Clinical Workflows and Real-World Deployment

We translate research into clinical workflows and real-world deployment, from the bedside to global low-resource settings.

Interdisciplinary Training

We cultivate future leaders through interdisciplinary training, pilot projects, and research symposia.

Public Trust, Ethics and Equity in Pediatric AI

We actively contribute to public trust, ethics and equity in pediatric AI, ensuring models serve diverse and historically underserved populations.

Initial initiatives include multimodal data integration, AI for craniofacial and pulmonary disorders, and open-source tools for rare disease screening.

Faculty Highlight

Our core faculty are internationally recognized leaders in pediatric health and AI. These leaders are supported by a network of scientists, engineers, and clinicians from the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, the Sanghani Center for AI & Data Analytics, the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, and many more.

Marius George Linguraru

Marius George Linguraru, DPhil, MA, MSc

  • Director, Division of AI Research
  • Principal Investigator
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Friedlander Michael

Michael Friedlander, PhD

  • Executive Director, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute
  • Virginia Tech Vice President for Health Sciences and Technology
Nathan Kuppermann

Nathan Kuppermann, MD, MPH

  • Executive Vice President and Chief Academic Officer
  • Director, Children's National Research Institute
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Ramakrishnan Naren

Naren Ramakrishnan, PhD

  • Professor
  • Thomas L. Phillips Professor of Engineering
Rider Nicholas

Nicholas Rider, DO

  • Professor
  • Clinical Immunologist

Pilot Studies

Our collaborative pilot projects — funded by the Gates Foundation, Amazon Web Services, and institutional seed grants — are laying the groundwork for broader initiatives:

• AI for Global Diagnostics: Deploying lightweight ML tools to improve diagnostic imaging access in low-resource settings globally (Gates Foundation–supported).

• Multimodal Syndromic Screening: Using facial recognition and biomarkers for early detection of rare genetic syndromes in children.

• Craniofacial Surgical Planning: Automating surgical pathway modeling for conditions like craniosynostosis to improve outcomes and planning precision.

• Pediatric Pulmonology AI: Applying machine learning to assess respiratory function and predict outcomes in children with chronic lung diseases.

• Real-Time Syndromic Surveillance: Early-stage projects adapting epidemiological AI tools for pediatric use (building on Ramakrishnan’s EMBERS platform).

Related News & Events

A joint initiative of