Farzad Khalvati

 Director of Radiology AI, Department of Diagnostic & Interventional Radiology

Dr. Farzad Khalvati is a Senior Scientist,  Director of Radiology Artificial Intelligence (AI), Endowed Chair in Medical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Director of the Intelligent Medical Informatics Computing Systems (IMICS) Lab at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). He is Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Imaging and Institute of Medical Science, with cross appointments to the Departments of Computer Science, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Institute of Biomedical Engineering. He has authored over 130 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and conference proceedings with additional 80 peer-reviewed abstracts presented in scientific conferences. His research has been supported by over $7.3M in peer-reviewed funding, with over $3.4M as the Principal Investigator. He has supervised more than 100 trainees at graduate and undergraduate levels and his students have received over $300K in scholarships and awards.

Research

Dr. Khalvati’s research focuses on developing explainable, trustworthy, and clinically deployable AI for precision medicine, with an emphasis on integrating medical imaging with complementary sources of information, including radiology reports, clinical and longitudinal data, and molecular biomarkers. He leads the design, development, validation, and clinical translation of multimodal AI systems for improved diagnosis, prognosis, treatment response assessment, and personalized treatment planning across multiple clinical domains. A central focus of his research is advancing interpretable, uncertainty-aware, human-centered, and workflow-integrated AI that supports clinicians and enables appropriate reliance on AI-assisted decisions. His research program also addresses generalizability and equitable access to healthcare, with the overarching goal of translating advances in AI into scalable technologies that improve patient care and clinical outcomes. 

Experience 

• 2025–Present: Director of Radiology AI, Department of Diagnostic & Interventional Radiology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2025–Present: Associate Professor (cross appointment) Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 
• 2024–Present: Senior Scientist, Neurosciences and Mental Health Program, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2022–Present: Associate Professor (cross appointment), Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2022–Present: Associate Professor (cross appointment) Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2021–Present: Associate Professor (primary appointment), Department of Medical Imaging, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2021–Present: Faculty Affiliate, Vector Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2020–Present: Full Graduate Faculty Member, Institute of Medical Science, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2020–Present: Endowed Chair in Medical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence, Department of Diagnostic & Interventional Radiology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2022–2023: Scientist, Neurosciences & Mental Health Program, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2020-2021: Associate Scientist, Neurosciences & Mental Health Program, Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2017–2020: Staff Scientist, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2014–2017: Junior Scientist, Imaging Research, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada

Education

• 2022: EUREKA International Certificate in Translational Medicine, EUREKA Institute, Siracusa, Italy
• 2013–2014: Postdoctoral Fellow, Imaging Research, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2003–2009: PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
• 2002–2003: M.A.Sc., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
• 1994–1998: B.Sc., Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Achievements

• 2025: Institute of Medical Science Faculty Recognition Award for Exceptional Teaching, Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2025: Institute of Medical Science Faculty Recognition Award for Strong Mentorship, Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2024: Institute of Medical Science Course Director Award, Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2021: Derek Harwood-Nash Annual Lecture in Neuroradiology Award, Derek Harwood-Nash Symposium, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2015: Careers in Cancer Research Development New PI Award, CIHR-Institute of Cancer Research (CIHR-ICR), Montreal, QC, Canada
• 2009–2011: Industrial Research and Development Fellowship Award, NSERC, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2009–2010: First Job Award, Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2005–2007: Postgraduate Scholarship (PGS2), NSERC, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada
• 2005–2007: President's Graduate Scholarship, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
• 2005–2007: President's Graduate Engineering Scholarship, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

1. Kudus, K., Wagner, M.W., Sheng, M., Bennett, J., Liu, A., Dirks, P., Tabori, U., Hawkins, C., Ertl-Wagner, B.B., Khalvati, F. Segmentation-free pretherapeutic assessment of BRAF-status in pediatric low-grade gliomas (2025) Communications Medicine
2. Yoo, J.J., Namdar, K., Wagner, M.W., Yeom, K.W., Nobre, L.F., Tabori, U., Hawkins, C., Ertl-Wagner, B.B., Khalvati, F. Generative AI for weakly supervised segmentation and downstream classification of brain tumors on MR images (2025). Scientific Reports.
3. Ketabi, S., Wagner, M.W., Hawkins, C., Tabori, U., Ertl-Wagner, B.B., Khalvati, F. Multimodal contrastive learning for enhanced explainability in pediatric brain tumor molecular diagnosis (2025) Scientific Reports.
4.  Kudus, K., Wagner, M.W., Namdar, K., Nobre, L., Bouffet, E., Tabori, U., Hawkins, C., Yeom, K.W., Ertl-Wagner, B.B., Khalvati, F. Increased confidence of radiomics facilitating pretheraputic differentiation of BRAF-altered pediatric low-grade glioma (2023) European Radiology.  
5.   Wu, Y., Namdar, K., Chen, C., Hosseinpour, S., Shroff, M., Doria, A., Khalvati, F. Automated adolescence scoliosis detection using Augmented U-Net with non-square kernels (2023) Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal.  

See a full list of Farzad Khalvati's publications