Tania Banerjee

By Stephen Greenwell

For Tania Banerjee, it wasn’t just the research environment at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering that ultimately convinced her to join the faculty. When she was evaluating her offers, the unique combination of Houston’s strong healthcare ecosystem and her family considerations became the tipping points.

“My parents live with me, so access to excellent medical care was essential,” said Banerjee, an assistant professor in the Information Science Technology Department. “Around that time, I received two faculty offers. Choosing Houston felt natural because of its outstanding healthcare ecosystem, including world-class hospitals like MD Anderson and Houston Methodist.”

“Of course, I’m also very happy with my department and the University of Houston,” she added. “Looking back, the timing, the opportunities, and the collaborative environment aligned in a way that felt right. The ability to work across disciplines and engage with strong partners in healthcare and data science has been incredibly supportive. There’s only so much we can plan for, and in my case, everything worked out remarkably well.”

That interdisciplinary environment directly supports the focus of Banerjee’s research. She applies AI techniques in healthcare to analyze cellular and genomic data in collaboration with MD Anderson, with the goal of identifying correlations with disease recurrence in conditions such as cancer. She also works on predicting the success of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in patients with Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor, as well as analyzing digital pathology slides to predict tumor types and patient survival outcomes.

Banerjee noted that certain computer algorithms — often described today under the AI umbrella — can identify patterns in health care data that are too complex or subtle for humans to detect on their own.

“I’m not a medical doctor, but I’m passionate about using the vast amount of health data available today to help predict outcomes or identify early warning signs,” she said. “I’m also exploring cybersecurity, particularly computer network security, because it’s an important area I teach at UH and one that impacts all of us in our increasingly digital world.”

Banerjee pointed to two major sources for her research and academic success — the lessons she’s learned from her advisors at the University of Florida, and from raising her son.

“My Ph.D. advisor, Professor Sartaj Sahni, had a tremendous positive influence on my academic life,” she said. “My mentors, Professor Sanjay Ranka and Professor Anand Rangarajan, also played major roles in shaping my approach to research. From them, I learned not only the joy of discovery but also the importance of integrity and ethics in our work.”

She added, “It may sound unexpected, but I’ve also learned a great deal from my son. Seeing the world through a child’s eyes encouraged me to look deeper, beyond surface explanations and into the fundamental ‘why’ behind how things work.”

When looking at the future of her field, Banerjee cited the continuing cross-pollination of disciplines as a promising development.

“I’m especially excited about the rapid developments in AI, catalyzed by advances in high-performance computing,” she said. “The combination of these two fields is opening up possibilities that were unimaginable even a few years ago. Another emerging area that fascinates me is quantum computing. It has the potential to transform the way we think about computation altogether. I’m eager to learn more about it and hopefully contribute to the field someday.”