Tensor Lab is a ten week summer research fellowship for machine learning engineers. You pair with a medical lead and a faculty physician at UCSF or UMSOM, own a scoped clinical research project from data to results, and leave with work you can present at the symposium, write up as a paper, or extend after the program.
Every project in the catalog exists because a practicing physician asked for it, a medical student scoped it, and a faculty PI agreed to sponsor the work. You come in as the engineer who builds it.
Each of the thirteen 2026 projects was proposed by a practicing physician and scoped with a medical student partner. Work happens on institutional data: MIMIC, All of Us, UCSF Clarity, SEER, and other clinical sources.
A faculty PI at UCSF or UMSOM sponsors every project. Weekly team check-ins, IRB and data access handled ahead of the sprint, and a direct line to clinicians who work on these problems full-time.
You take a scoped clinical question from data to results over the ten week sprint. The summer closes with the Tensor Lab symposium, where each team presents their work to the cohort, faculty PIs, and invited clinicians.
Thirteen projects across emergency medicine, cardiology, oncology, psychiatry, and more. Pick three on your application and rank them. A live applicant counter on each card shows how competitive it is before you commit.
Loading featured projects…
Every project runs as a team of three. You write the code and run the experiments. A medical student lead translates the clinical question and keeps the work grounded. A faculty physician sets the scientific standard.
You own the build. Training code, experiments, data wrangling, results write-up. Fifteen to twenty hours per week from June through August, remote. You are the technical lead on the project.
A medical student who framed the research question and helps you interpret results. Meets with you weekly and translates between the clinic and the model.
A practicing physician and published researcher who sponsors the project, secures data access, and sets the scientific standard. Biweekly check-ins with the team.
Ten weeks of work, and four things that stay with you afterward.
Key dates for Summer 2026. Waitlist to final symposium in under five months.
The waitlist is live on LinkedIn and through our informal channels. Add your name to get first notice when the full application opens on April 27.
The application goes live alongside the campus listservs. Browse the thirteen projects, pick your top three, and submit one application. Plan for about thirty minutes.
Submissions cut off. Matched fellows move into onboarding; data access setup begins the same day.
IRB paperwork, credentialing, platform access, and background reading. The logistics get handled up front so the sprint starts on research, not setup.
The fellowship kicks off June 16. Build the model, run the experiments, draft the write-up. Weekly technical reviews, biweekly faculty check-ins, one mid-sprint demo.
Each team presents their work to the cohort, faculty PIs, and invited clinicians. Manuscript drafting continues from there for teams ready to write up.
Seven projects from our 2025 pilot cohort. Every team shipped final results at the summer symposium.
Compared LLM based semantic models against XGBoost across clinical prediction tasks.
Built an ETL first prototype for clinical evidence synthesis using a Knowledge Graph RAG system.
Used SEER registry data linked with social determinants of health proxies to stratify prostate cancer patients.
Investigated whether a simplified multimodal model using only PET/CT and clinical data could match expert annotated performance.
Built a training simulator using LLMs to create interactive, data grounded emergency triage encounters from MIMIC IV.
Attention based deep learning over free text discharge summaries to predict thirty day readmissions.
Compared ResNet50, VGG16, and InceptionV3 for CT based lung lesion classification on the IQ OTH NCCD dataset.
Tensor Lab showed me meaningful challenges that combine both clinical and technical domains. As I prepare for my PhD applications, this experience was invaluable in clearly defining my research direction.
Research Fellow, 2025Tensor Lab taught me to conceptualize and develop applications for LLMs that require significant domain knowledge.
Research Fellow, 2025The guidance from the faculty and mentors was exceptional. I wouldn't have reached our final publication goals without their help.
Research Fellow, 2025Collaborating with a global cohort provided me with a network of contacts for future projects.
Research Fellow, 2025Two founders and three additional directors, all current medical students, running the fellowship end to end.
Matt Allen
Co-Founder · Executive Director
UCSF School of Medicine
Aaron Ge
Co-Founder · Technical Director
University of Maryland School of Medicine
Chy Murali
Operational Director
University of Maryland School of Medicine
Gavin Shu
Strategic Director
UCSF School of Medicine
Angie Lee
Business Director
University of Maryland School of Medicine
No. Your medical lead and faculty PI provide clinical context. We are looking for strong Python, solid ML fundamentals, and curiosity about medicine. You will pick up the clinical side as you go.
Plan for fifteen to twenty hours a week from June through August. Think of it like a serious research internship. If your circumstances shift, we can adjust.
Remote by default. You meet your team over Zoom or Slack. Some chapters organize optional in person working sessions if there is geographic overlap.
No. The fellowship is unpaid.
We default to open science. Code is open sourced and all team members share authorship. Patient data stays under the PI's institutional controls.
We accept applications from current students, recent graduates, and career switchers with strong ML skills. The fellowship runs in the summer, but participation is not limited to people on academic calendars.
You rank three projects when you apply. If your first choice is filled before your application is processed, you stay in the running for your second and third choices. You will receive an email with a link to swap in a new choice if one of yours is filled.