From AI to Surgical Robotics: Illinois MD/PhD Students Are Tackling Medicine’s Toughest Challenges

Carle Illinois College of Medicine’s MD/PhD program is preparing an elite group of Physician Innovators equipped to lead the fight against disease in the research lab and at the bedside. The Medical Scholars Program (MSP) offers unique engineering-informed medical training through CI MED’s MD program, and world-class scientific research experience through the PhD programs at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The program’s earliest trainees are already building solutions to advance how we diagnose and care for patients with heart and kidney disease, neurological injury, and limited access to care.

MD candidates interested in pursuing a dual degree may apply to become MSP candidates any time after their first year of medical school. For the PhD portion of their program, students must be admitted to one of the U. of I.’s more than 70 doctoral programs. After completing their PhD program, students return to CI MED to complete the requirements of the MD program. This includes the major clinical training phase. Starting in 2027, applicants will be able to apply directly to the MD/PhD program during the medical school application process.

“CI MED’s location within a premier research university is a major differentiator: trainees can learn medicine while simultaneously gaining the technical depth to invent what medicine needs next,” said MSP Director Dr. Dan Llano, a Carle Health physician who earned his MD/PhD from the University of Illinois College of Medicine, which ended its operations on the Urbana-Champaign campus in 2022. 

Parallel Preparation

Llano says cross-disciplinary training produces innovative clinicians who are also trained as research scientists. Their unique skillset will equip them to build solutions ranging from new devices and diagnostics to data-driven clinical tools and scalable health innovations.

“Dual-degree trainees gain the ability to identify unmet clinical needs at the bedside and then develop mechanistic or technological solutions to those needs. I expect CI MED’s MSP trainees to become clinicians who are also builders — people who can practice excellent medicine while driving discovery and innovation in parallel,” Llano said.

The Illinois Difference

Illinois offers an unusual breadth of PhD programs, with world-class engineering, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and translational sciences infrastructure. CI MED’s current MD/PhD candidates chose to pursue doctorate degrees in bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and computer science.

“Having the freedom to obtain my PhD in a renowned Computer Science program with a focus on surgical robotics is both incredibly rare and very exciting. I believe the flexibility of the MD/PhD program at CI MED is its greatest strength,” said CI MED’s first MD/PhD candidate, Al Smith. 

Smith and his MSP colleagues are already leading research and innovation projects that promise to advance medicine and health care delivery for patients worldwide. Some of the highlights are summarized below.

Al Smith, PhD 

Special Projects: Atlas: Neurosurgical Navigation Device for Placement of External Ventricular Drain (EVD), presented at multiple international scientific meetings, supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health; now completing a pre-clinical study at Johns Hopkins in Boston.

“This program encourages students like myself to dive deep into translational research, learning the clinical needs, coming up with ideas, meticulously exploring the feasibility of these ideas, and testing the ideas practically before moving toward clinical trials. I believe this program has trained us to be particularly unique physician-scientists with the additional innovation and engineering components.”

Smith completed his PhD in Computer Science, with a concentration in medical robotics, in December 2025. He has now returned to CI MED to complete the final two years of his MD training. He plans to apply for residency in neurosurgery in 2028.

Pranav Dorbala

Special projects: Heart-Kidney Digital Twin, working with Professor Ravi Iyer’s DEPEND Group at the Coordinated Science Laboratory

“AI for healthcare is mission-critical — there is a real potential to address systemic bias and gaps in representation that exist in clinical trials today. Underserved populations are often hesitant to join trials, which means there are gaps in therapy for the patients who often need it most. Quality care shouldn't depend on your zip code. AI and machine learning offer a genuine opportunity to close this gap — for underserved communities and for everyone in need of better care.”

Dorbala envisions a career on the cutting edge of medical innovation, made possible by the expertise at both CI MED and The Grainger College of Engineering. “The goal is to bring ‘master clinician-grade’ care to all populations — rural, underserved, and urban patients alike. In the future, I hope to be in a position to design clinical trials that evaluate and validate AI's ability to improve medical management, catch rare diagnoses, and deliver more equitable care for all.”

Bhargavee Gnana

Special projects: Named Illinois Young Innovator of the Year in 2023 for a rapid HPV detection test; team member in projects aimed at improving cervical cancer screening (CerviCare) and detection of labor onset (AmnioAlert)

Gnana completed three years of medical school before entering the MD/PhD program. Now in her first year of the doctoral program in bioengineering, she is a member of CI MED Dean Mark Cohen’s lab. 

“Before medical school, I worked at a startup in Boston, where I saw firsthand how research drives innovation and improves patient care. Pursuing the dual degree felt like the right path because I wanted to be at the intersection of bench science and clinical practice. As I’ve progressed in training, I’ve realized how essential it is to bring clinical context to basic research. I’m passionate about developing patient-motivated, translational solutions that bridge gaps in healthcare and, ultimately, improve lives.”

Gnana was recently selected to participate in the 2026 CASE (Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering) Workshop sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, where she will learn from science policy and advocacy experts about the role of science in policy making and the federal policy making process.

Editor’s note: To learn more about CI MED’s Medical Scholars Program, contact Dr. Dan Llano.