Draft:Mercy Nyamewaa Asiedu

Not to be confused with Mercy Asiedu

Mercy Nyamewaa Asiedu (born March 27th 1991) is a Ghanaian biomedical engineer and artificial intelligence researcher known for her work in developing the Callascope, an imaging device for self cervical cancer screening. She is also known for developing artificial intelligence algorithms for cervical cancer diagnosis, and ultrasound imaging as well as understanding and mitigating artificial intelligence biases in global health. She co-founded GAPhealth Technologies Inc. and is currently a research scientist at Google Research.

Background and Education
Asiedu was born on March 27th 1991 to Dr. Ernest Assah Asiedu and Mrs. Monica Blankson Asiedu in Cape Coast, Ghana. She lived in Aberdeen, Scotland from 1992-1995, while her father completed his doctorate degree in Agriculture at the University of Aberdeen. In 1995 her family moved back to Kumasi, Ghana where she spent most of her formative years.

Asiedu attended St. Leo International School, and in 5th grade moved to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Primary School and then KNUST Junior High School. After junior high school, she was accepted into her first choice senior high program - Holy Child Secondary School - where she studied Science and as a top performer, became a member of her school's National Science and Math Quiz Team. After passing the West African Senior School Certificate Examination, Mercy was accepted into KNUST Medical School. Concurrently, she had been nominated by her senior high school for the Zawadi Africa Educational fund, founded by Dr. Susan Mboya to provide African girls with scholarships to study in the United States, and which was modeled after the Mboya-Kennedy Airlift. After a series of interviews, followed by SATs and college applications, Asiedu was accepted into the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA on a full scholarship as a Renaissance and Global Scholar.

Asiedu obtained her Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering degree (with a minor in business) with distinction in 2014 from the University of Rochester. She studied abroad during her junior year for six months at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. She went on to obtain her Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University (with a certificate in Global Health) in 2019, studying under Prof. Nimmi Ramanujam. While at Duke she developed and clinically validated mobile-connected imaging devices  and machine learning algorithms     for cervical cancer screening, for which she received several awards. This work is currently being commercialized by a new startup, the Calla Health Foundation. In 2019 she was awarded a Schmidt Science Postdoctoral Fellowship and conducted her postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) where she worked on various machine learning for health research projects. While at MIT, she was part of the MIT Jameel Clinic and worked with the Center for Ultrasound Research and Translation under Dr. Anthony Samir, and the Clinical Machine Learning group under Prof. David Sontag.

Career
As of August 2022, Asiedu is a machine learning research scientist at Google Research, based out of San Francisco, CA. She is the co-founder (and previous co-CEO) of GAPhealth Technologies Inc which she founded with Bai Bintou Kaira. She is a previous co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of the Calla Health Foundation.

Asiedu interned at the Mayo clinic as a summer undergraduate research fellow with Mohammed Mehrmohammadi and Mostafa Fatemi. While in undergrad at the University of Rochester she interned for several semesters in Prof. Amy Lerner's biomechanics lab. During her semester abroad at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne Australia, she also interned in Prof. Marcus Pandy's biomechanic's lab.

Personal Life
Asiedu married Dr. Jonah Nathan Gollub, a physicist, in 2019 and they welcomed a son, Etan Gollub in 2021.

TEDx Talk
In 2020, Asiedu gave a Tedx talk at Duke University - The Invisible organ: Reimagining Gynecology. That year she was also invited to TEDMED Boston, to speak about the Calla Health Foundation.

Media Features

 * Pardes, Arielle. “The Speculum Finally Gets a Modern Redesign.” Wired
 * Lenharo, Mariana. “The Gynecological Exam Is Finally Getting a Makeover” Elemental
 * Jeff Minerd. “Automated Cervical Cancer Screening-Moving artificial intelligence-based screening closer to reality”, MEDPAGETODAY, ASCO: American Society of Clinical Oncology
 * Worcester, Sharon. “Novel Device Aims to Make Cervical Cancer Screening More Accessible.” MDedge Psychiatry, Ob. Gyn. News
 * “Computer History Museum Announces Inaugural Tech For Humanity Prize Winners”, PR News Wire
 * Marcotte, Bob. “Changemaker: Combining Engineering and Medicine”, The Rochester Review