Sae Han, MPH | Northwestern University

About Me

I am a PhD candidate in Health and Biomedical Informatics at Northwestern University. My research examines whether local LLMs (particularly small, resource-efficient models) can reliably support qualitative data analysis in community-engaged research settings. I focus on human-in-the-loop systems that combine technical benchmarking with direct input from the researchers and community partners who actually use the outputs.

Much of what shaped this work came from my years at the National Institutes of Health, where I worked on clinical research data systems, recruitment research, and informatics initiatives at the National Institute on Aging and the National Cancer Institute. Watching research teams struggle to make sense of large volumes of unstructured data (and seeing how often valuable patient and community insights went underanalyzed simply due to capacity constraints) is what pushed me toward building AI tools that are practical, privacy-preserving, and reproducible. I care abotu making advanced data methods and technology accessible to the researchers and practitioners who need them most.

Alongside my doctoral and NIH work, I have collaborated with academic groups, federal contrators, and public health departments on LLM-assisted research tools, ontology development, and clinical data standardization. Before Northwestern, I earned an MPH and Certificate in Health Promotion Research and Practice from Columbia University and a BS in Human Biology, Health, and Society from Cornell University. My published work spans Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, health equity, and public health surveillance.

Outside of research, you can usually find me crocheting, cross-stitching, embroidering, baking/cooking, and doing pottery!