Skip to content

Research / Funded grants

2025 Early Career Researcher Grant

Nature or Nurture Depends on the Individual: Person Specific Artificial Intelligence Suicidality Risk Models

Alexander Hatoum, Ph.D.

Alexander Hatoum, Ph.D.

Washington University at St. Louis

Mentor: Anna Docherty, Ph.D., University of Utah

Amount awarded
$140,000
Focus area
Psychosocial
Awarded
2025

Inside the Research

This proposal aims to address the diversity of risk factors for suicidal thoughts and behaviors that complicate current prediction models. In particular, this project focuses on the intersection of genetic and environmental predictors, and their overlap. Explainable AI will be used to integrate various sources of information and create person-centered risk scores that include genetic models, guided by single cell molecular patterns, and environmental exposure risk factors. This approach could enable more targeted, effective intervention strategies based on personalized risk profiles.

Full scientific abstract

Refining predictive models of suicidality could improve early intervention efforts. “Heterogeneity”, which suggests there are unique individual-specific pathways through which different people come to experience suicidal thoughts and behaviors, is a pervasive problem that hinders the clinical utility of polygenic risk scores and environmental predictors. Recent strides in artificial intelligence (AI) have demonstrated that models can be trained to predict in the presence of heterogeneity. This proposal aims to parse the heterogeneity of clearly defined suicidality related phenotypes through the development of AI models using the latest data sources from large scale genetic studies of inherited and single cell transcriptomic risk and multivariate models of environmental (aka “exposome”). Specifically, a multi-PGS library will be built from summary statistics available in a GWAS catalog. Then, the model will be expanded through generation of functional annotations from a single cell RNA sequencing dataset. Using patterns across the AI model, we can infer population trends in contributions to heterogeneity. In a parallel analysis, we will build an exposome risk score (ERS) from unique environmental measures of environmental exposures and train the model to determine if using genetic predictor jointly with exposome predictors improves our ability to predict and distinguish between distinct suicidal behaviors. This work will lay the foundation for personalized prediction models with better clinical utility to improve intervention efforts.

This study is underway

Findings will be published here as the research progresses. to hear when they’re available.

More funded research

See all grants →

2026 Early Career Researcher Grant

Analyzing the Impact of Companion Dogs as a Protective Factor for Prevention of Suicidality in Veterans

Leanne Nieforth, Ph.D. · $140,000

2026 Early Career Researcher Grant

Future-Oriented Mental Imagery and Adolescent Suicide Risk

Ki Eun Shin, Ph.D. · $140,000