Phat K. Huynh

About Phat K. Huynh

I am an Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University and the Founder & Director of the PASSIO (Predictive Analytics, Smart Systems, and Integrated Optimization) Laboratory, where I develop intelligent systems for high-stakes, real-world problems in healthcare, infrastructure, and complex engineered environments.My work sits at the intersection of scientific machine learning, physics-informed and graph-based digital twins, smart sensing, biomedical AI, and reliability engineering. I build models that combine domain knowledge with real-world data to improve prediction, monitoring, diagnosis, and control across applications such as robotic and mitral-valve surgery, wearable EEG and stress monitoring, sleep and cardiovascular analytics, medical imaging, and resilient electric power systems. I am especially interested in AI that is not only accurate, but also interpretable, uncertainty-aware, and ready for deployment where trust matters.My research has led to award-winning papers, patents, invited talks, and collaborations across academia, medicine, and industry. It has been recognized with the Best Paper Award at BHI 2025 and multiple top-paper honors at the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS). My scholarship appears in venues including Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Sleep Medicine Reviews, PLOS ONE, Physics of Fluids, and Transactions on Learning Technologies. I also contribute to funded projects spanning DOE-supported resilient electric power systems, Intuitive Surgical-backed mitral-valve research, and multi-institutional AI-driven smart systems education and outreach.Beyond research, I mentor more than 20 emerging scholars across engineering, medicine, and global health, serve as an NSF reviewer panelist and Editor for PLOS Digital Health, and work to translate advanced AI into measurable impact. My goal is to build trustworthy, high-impact systems that make healthcare smarter, infrastructure more resilient, and innovation genuinely useful.

Experience

1. Director

   Passio Laboratory

   Aug 2024 — Present · Greensboro, NC, US

   Dr. Phat K. Huynh is Founder and Director of PASSIO Lab at North Carolina A&T State University, where he leads an interdisciplinary research program in scientific machine learning, predictive digital twins, smart sensing, and integrated optimization for healthcare, energy, and resilient complex systems. His publication record includes more than 30 journal articles and 25 conference proceedings, with papers appearing in highly prestigious journals, namely Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Neurocomputing, and Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics. He currently mentors 5 graduate researchers and 12 other research scholars, and his work has earned major distinctions including the 2025 Best Paper Award at BHI and multiple RAMS honors, including the Ralph A. Evans/P. K. McElroy Award, the William A. Golomski Award, the Stan Ofsthun Award, the Thomas L. Fagan Award, and the Doug Ogden Award. He has served as PI or Co-PI on funded projects totaling approximately $2.66 million, including a $2.55 million DOE CESER award, a Intuitive Surgical research grant, and a UNC Undergraduate Research Program award. PASSIO Lab’s current research network includes collaborators and team members connected with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Stanford Medicine, and Carnegie Mellon University.

Education

• North Dakota State University

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Industrial Engineering

• University of South Florida

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Industrial Engineering

• International University - VNU HCMC

  Bachelor's degree, Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering