Ayse Sert Oti
Master of Public Informatics, Class of 2026
Registered Nurse, Biostatistician, Data analyst, Public Health Researcher, Machine Learning Engineer, AI prompt developer, Health Informatics Researcher, Medical Anthropologist
Healthcare, Culture & Data Systems
Ayse began her career as a registered nurse in Turkey, working in hospitals across Mardin, Van, and Istanbul. Through these experiences, she saw firsthand how healthcare systems can fail patients not only clinically but also culturally and structurally. Motivated to better understand these challenges, she pursued a B.A. in Anthropology alongside her clinical background and later completed a Master’s in Biostatistics. These experiences combining care, culture, and data—ultimately led her to the MPI program at Rutgers, where she could explore how information systems and AI can better serve vulnerable communities.
Academic Experience at Rutgers
Ayse describes the MPI program as transformative, expanding her perspective on AI and data systems as social and political infrastructures rather than just technical tools. Courses such as Studio for Public Informatics and Generative AI in Healthcare played a key role in her journey. In the Studio course, her team developed a multi-agent ideation system, and later explored the ethical and governance challenges of Agentic AI in government systems. She also co-founded the Kurdish Studies Graduate Student Association at Rutgers University and served as its founding president.
Research & Hands-On Projects
Her research focuses on AI in healthcare and public policy. As a Research Assistant at the Center for Health Services Research at Rutgers, she contributes to work on health policy and aging research. One of her notable projects involved building a hybrid NLP pipeline to detect dementia from speech data, combining semantic network analysis with transformer-based embeddings while prioritizing explainability for clinical applications. She has also co-authored a peer-reviewed article in Applied Geography examining the mental health impacts in Ukraine using machine learning.
Future Vision
Looking ahead, Ayse aims to work at the intersection of AI governance, health equity, and public policy. Her current project, CASN (Cognitive Autonomy & Safety Negotiation), explores a privacy-aware AI decision-support system designed to help dementia caregivers navigate high-risk situations.
We’re excited to see how Ayse and fellow MPI students continue advancing responsible innovation at the intersection of AI, healthcare, and public policy.