Nidhi Kulkarni
From exploring research ideas to first-author IEEE publication in one summer
Where Nidhi Started
Her Background
- • 11th grader passionate about medicine and health sciences
- • Had written one literature review on COPD with a mentor
- • Experience with Python and AI through a lung disease detection project
- • No prior peer-reviewed publication
Her Goals
- • Publish a research paper
- • Win scholarships through research and science fairs
- • Qualify for ISEF
- • Build competitive edge for college admissions
Her Initial Research Ideas
"Non-invasive detection of autoimmune diseases using skin microbiome signatures; Exploring the gut-endocrine axis in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)"
— Nidhi, before starting the program
The Research
Working with her YRI mentor, Nidhi combined both of her initial research interests into a single ambitious project. She developed an AI-driven multi-omics framework that integrates gut and skin microbiome data to identify non-invasive biomarkers for PCOS and autoimmune disorders.
Technical Approach
FastQC, Trimmomatic, Bowtie2, Kraken2, Bracken pipelines
Random Forest, XGBoost, LightGBM models
SHAP and LIME analysis for model explainability
Achieved >90% classification accuracy
The Outcome
Skin Microbiome Signatures for Non-Invasive Detection of Autoimmune Disorders and Gut-Endocrine Axis Disruption in PCOS: An AI-Driven Multi-Omics Approach
2025 IEEE 7th International Conference on Computing, Communication and Automation (ICCCA)
November 28-30, 2025
First Author
Literature review experience, no peer-reviewed publications
First-author IEEE publication combining AI + healthcare research
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