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Heman Shakeri Receives Two UVA LaunchPad Awards to Advance Diabetes Detection and Treatment
Heman Shakeri, assistant professor of data science at the University of Virginia, has received two UVA LaunchPad awards totaling $300,000 to support data-driven innovations aimed at transforming diabetes detection, modeling, and early intervention.
The first award provides $200,000 in LaunchPad funding to support the development of the first foundation model for both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. Shakeri will serve as co-principal investigator alongside fellow University of Virginia researchers Boris Kovatchev, Madge M. Jones Professor of Diabetes in the School of Medicine and the School of Data Science, and Sue Brown, Kenneth R. Crispell Professor in the Division of Endocrinology. The project focuses on unifying large-scale diabetes data sources, pretraining advanced machine learning models, and validating them using FDA-accepted simulators. The team anticipates initial clinical translation within 12 to 18 months, enabling early applications in diabetes research and care.
Shakeri also received a second LaunchPad award of $100,000 to develop a home-based continuous glucose monitoring screening test for the early detection of Type 1 diabetes progression. In this project, Shakeri will serve as co-principal investigator with Leon Farhi, associate professor in the School of Medicine and Systems and Information Engineering, and Mark DeBoer, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology. The funding will support algorithm development, engagement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration through a pre-submission process, and the initiation of industry partnerships with continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) manufacturers. The goal is to identify individuals at risk for disease progression early enough to enable timely use of disease-modifying therapies before clinical diagnosis.
“These two projects represent a continuum of data-driven diabetes care—from catching the disease before it starts to optimize treatment once it's established," said Shakeri. "With the early detection project, we're asking: can a simple CGM worn at home identify who's at risk before symptoms appear? With the foundation model, we're asking: can AI learn the full complexity of glucose dynamics well enough to automate insulin delivery without any user input? Both require us to extract meaningful patterns from noisy biological signals, and both have the potential to fundamentally change how we approach diabetes.”
Shakeri’s awards reflect the School of Data Science’s growing role in translational research at UVA, where data-driven approaches are increasingly central to addressing complex health challenges. Together, the two projects underscore how interdisciplinary collaboration and responsible data science can shape the future of precision medicine and early disease intervention.
“These two awards underscore the strength of interdisciplinary, translational research at the School of Data Science,” said Assistant Dean of Research Stephen Turner. “Heman’s work brings together advanced data science, clinical expertise, and real-world application in ways that have the potential to meaningfully improve how diabetes is detected, modeled, and treated. It is exactly the kind of collaborative, impact-driven research we aim to support.”
LaunchPad is a translational research initiative sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Office of the Vice President for Research. Designed to accelerate promising discoveries toward real-world application, the program provides funding, infrastructure, and strategic support to interdisciplinary teams working to advance technologies with strong potential for commercialization and societal impact. Since its launch in 2009, the program has supported dozens of projects across medicine, engineering, and the sciences, helping researchers advance innovations toward clinical trials, regulatory milestones, startups, and industry partnerships.
