Tyler Ward
Visiting Assistant Professor
Dept. of Engineering Sciences
Morehead State University
About
I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Engineering Sciences at Morehead State University (MSU). At MSU, I direct the MEDUSA (Medical Empowerment Through Digital Health, User-Centric Systems, and Artificial Intelligence) Lab, and co-direct the Virtual Reality and Automation Lab with Dr. Kouroush Jenab.
My research interests, while diverse, generally fall into the domain of applied artificial intelligence (AI). During my Ph.D., I focused on developing novel prompt-driven segmentation models for adaptive and data-efficient medical image analysis. Prior to my Ph.D., I was more interested in building object detection models for pedestrian and animal detection and tracking for autonomous vehicles, as well as crop detection in smart agriculture systems. I also have extensive research experience in industrial machine learning, with a particular focus on quality, reliability, and maintenance.
I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky in August 2026 working under Dr. Abdullah-Al-Zubaer Imran in the Computational Health, Imaging, and Learning Laboratory (CHILL). I received my M.S. in Engineering & Technology Management from MSU in May 2023, and my B.S. in Computer Science from the same institution in May 2021.
News/Updates
Jul 2026: Pleased to welcome Brady Adkins and Chloe Cantrell to my research group at MSU as Undergraduate Research Fellows (URFs). Brady's work will focus on the design of AI methods to characterize trauma discourse from online support communitites to improve clinical understanding, while Chloe's work will focus on improving the realism, safety, and fairness of synthetic prolonged exposure therapy data.
Jul 2026: I have officially passed my dissertation defense and become Dr. Ward!
Apr 2026: I gave a guest lecture to the CS 509: Computer and Data Ethics class at the University of Kentucky titled "Do No Harm: or, How to Stop the Medical Industry From Killing Patients with AI Nonsense".
Apr 2026: Pleased to announce that I will be joining the faculty of Morehead State University as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the Department of Engineering Sciences. Following the completion of my PhD, this position will transfer to tenure-track Assistant Professor.
Apr 2026: I gave a talk titled "Promptable Segmentation for Adaptive and Data-Efficient Medical Image Analysis" at the Department of Computer Science's Keeping Current Seminar at the University of Kentucky.
Jan 2026: I will be teaching CS 310: Algorithms and Advanced Data Structures this spring semester at Morehead State University!.
Jan 2026: Pleased to announce that I have accepted a position as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Engineering Sciences at Morehead State University!
Dec 2025: Our paper Autoadaptive Medical Segment Anything Model has been accepted at Scientific Reports!