Johan Verjans

Associate Professor Johan Verjans is a clinician-scientist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and a pivotal figure at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning (AIML), where he serves as Platform Leader AI at SAHMRI. He is affiliated with the Division of Research and Innovation at the University of Adelaide, steering a multidisciplinary research group that merges clinical medicine, biomedical science, and computer science to advance AI in healthcare.

• MD-PhD, Maastricht University
• DiPalma Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania
• Rubicon Fellowship, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
• Clinician-scientist award, University Medical Centre Utrecht
• University of Adelaide Future Industry Making Fellowship

His research spans cross-disciplinary translational studies, particularly in medical AI, cardiovascular imaging, and machine learning. He has pioneered applications of CVPR- and MICCAI-published AI methodologies in medical imaging, including confidence-aware anomaly detection, 3D segmentation, and transformer-based image synthesis, with direct clinical implementations like the world’s first RCT in Emergency Department AI (RapidX) and the largest AI project in South Australia (Auomedic).

The Medical Machine Learning group, which he founded, has 40+ members and partnerships with Roche, Siemens Healthineers, GSK, and Medtronic. His team’s success in the NIH Medical Visual Question Answering (VQA) challenge highlights their innovation in answering clinical questions from medical images, akin to early medical ChatGPT capabilities.

His work has earned recognition in elite global venues, including three papers in CVPR (#2 globally by h5-index), Nature Reviews Cardiology (IF: 41.7), and European Heart Journal (IF: 39.3). He has 150+ peer-reviewed publications, with 3,000+ citations in elite venues, underscoring his impact across medical AI, cardiovascular medicine, and imaging.

Scientific awards and recognition:

• NIH Medical VQA Challenge Winner
• Dutch Science Foundation Rubicon Fellowship
• University of Adelaide Future Industry Making Fellowship (2022)
• DiPalma Fellowship
• Clinician-scientist award, University Medical Centre Utrecht

As a mentor, he fosters academic growth through collaborations across SA Health, SA Pathology, and SA Pharmacy, integrating AI into clinical workflows. His leadership has positioned the University of Adelaide as a global leader in AI for healthcare, evidenced by the 2022 AI Centre in Medicine of the Year nomination.