Sean Wu

Sean Wu

I'm Sean Wu, a Rhodes Scholar and graduate student at the University of Oxford, where I am mentored by Professor David Clifton. My research focuses on developing AI and large language model agents to reason more reliably and support scientific discovery and healthcare.

Previously, I completed my undergraduate studies at Pepperdine University, where I was mentored by Professor Fabien Scalzo and Professor Ira Kurtz (UCLA). Our research focused on computer vision in neurology and benchmarking medical LLMs.

Email / Google Scholar / Lab Website

May 2025 Awarded Pepperdine's Outstanding Division Researcher and Outstanding Natural Science Student (top 1).
April 2025 Awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP)!
Nov 2024 Excited to be selected as Pepperdine's first ever Rhodes Scholar. [Article]
Sep 2024 Delivered a spotlight talk on my AI research at the Human-Centered AI Conference hosted by Pepperdine. [Article]
May 2024 Joined Deloitte’s LLM/NLP team for summer research on ontology-based language models.
Feb 2024 Research on medical LLMs was featured in ZDNET Tech News. [Article]
Dec 2023 Received a CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Honorable Mention for national recognition in computing research. [Article]
Sep 2023 Featured by Pepperdine University for leading research on medical applications of LLMs. [Article]
Jul 2023 Awarded the Northrop Grumman Endowed Scholarship for excellence in computer science.
May 2023 Completed a summer internship with Amazon Science and the Columbia University Billinge Group (SURE) focused on AI for material science.
Mar 2023 I'm super excited to be awarded the Barry Goldwater Scholarship.[Article]
May 2022 Conducted summer research on AI for science at the Keck Data Science Institute.

NLP for Healthcare

Evaluating Prompt Optimization with TextGrad for Medical Question Answering
Sean Wu, Michael Koo, Fabien Scalzo, Ira Kurtz, (Under Review at Scientific Reports),
[ArXiv]
Adversarial Databases Improve Success in Retrieval-based Large Language Models
Sean Wu, Michael Koo, Liyo Kao, Andy Black, Lesley Blum, Fabien Scalzo, Ira Kurtz, The 3rd New Frontiers in Adversarial Machine Learning in NeurIPS'2024, (2024, spotlight presentation, top 21% of accepted papers).
[Paper]
Benchmarking Open-Source Large Language Models, GPT-4 and Claude 2 on Multiple-Choice Questions in Nephrology
Sean Wu, Michael Koo, Lesley Blum, Andy Black, Zhe Fei, Fabien Scalzo, Ira Kurtz, New England Journal of Medicine Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 1 No. 2, 2024.
[Paper]

Neurovascular 3D Reconstruction

3D Reconstruction from 2D Cerebral Angiograms as a Volumetric Denoising Problem
Sean Wu, Kaneko Naoki, Steve Mendoza, David S Liebeskind, Fabien Scalzo, International Symposium on Visual Computing, pp. 382-393. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023.
[Paper]
Fourier Feature Network for 3D Vessel Reconstruction from Biplane Angiograms
Sean Wu, Kaneko Naoki, David S Liebeskind, Fabien Scalzo, Journal of Machine Vision and Applications, 2024.
[Paper]

Deep Learning in Ophthalmology

Prediction of visual field progression with serial optic disc photographs using deep learning
Vahid Mohammadzadeh, Sean Wu, Tyler Davis, Arvind Vepa, Esteban Morales, Sajad Besharati, Kiumars Edalati, Jack Martinyan, Mahshad Rafiee, Arthur Martynian, Fabien Scalzo, Joseph Caprioli, Kouros Nouri-Mahdavi, British Journal of Ophthalmology (2023).
[Paper]
Auxiliary-Domain Learning for a Functional Prediction of Glaucoma Progression
Sean Wu, Vahid Mohammadzadeh, Kiumars Edalati, Jack Martinyan, Arthur Martinyan, Joseph Caprioli, Kouros Nouri-Mahdavi, Fabien Scalzo, International Workshop on Ophthalmic Medical Image Analysis (pp. 21-31). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
[Paper] [Video]
Prediction of Central Visual Field Measures From Macular OCT Volume Scans With Deep Learning
Vahid Mohammadzadeh*, Arvind Vepa*, Chuanlong Li, Sean Wu, Leila Chew, Golnoush Mahmoudinezhad, Evan Maltz, Serhat Sahin, Apoorva Mylavarapu, Kiumars Edalati, Jack Martinyan, Dariush Yalzadeh, Fabien Scalzo, Joseph Caprioli, Kouros Nouri-Mahdavi, Translational Vision Science & Technology 12, no. 11 (2023): 5-5.
[Paper]
Prediction of visual field progression based on baseline and longitudinal structural measurements with a deep learning model
Vahid Mohammadzadeh, Sean Wu, Tyler Davis, Arvind Vepa, Esteban Morales, Sajad Besharati, Kiumars Edalati, Jack Martinyan, Mahshad Rafiee, Arthur Martynian, Fabien Scalzo, Joseph Caprioli, Kouros Nouri-Mahdavi, American Journal of Ophthalmology (2024).
[Paper]
A Multimodal Approach for Predicting Glaucoma Progression with Artificial Intelligence
Vahid Mohammadzadeh, Sean Wu, Sajad Besharati, Kiumars Edelati, Mahshad Rafiee, Jack Martinyan, Arthur Martinyan, Fabien Scalzo, Joseph Caprioli, Kouros Nouri-Mahdavi, (Under Review) American Journal of Ophthalmology (2024).
[Paper Out Soon!]
Denoising visual field data via self-supervised masked autoencoders for enhanced glaucoma progression detection
Sean Wu, Vahid Mohammadzadeh, Jun Yu Chen, Jaewon Lee, Kouros Nouri-Mahdavi, Joseph Caprioli*, Zhe Fei*, Fabien Scalzo*, arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.12146 , (2024).
[ArXiv]

Miscellaneous

Foil-Net: Deep Wave Classification for Hydrofoil Surfing
Zachary Mossing, Sean Wu, Kevin Hong, Fabien Scalzo, Jesse Cha, International Symposium on Visual Computing, pp. 109-120. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023.
[Paper]
Deep Learning-Based Classification of Plant Xylem Tissue from Light Micrographs
Sean Wu, Reem Al Dabagh, Anna L. Jacobsen, Helen I. Holmlund, Fabien Scalzo, International Symposium on Visual Computing, pp. 237-248. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022.
[Paper]

Education

Teaching

Basketball

Intramural Basketball Team 2025
2025 intramural team.
Intramural Basketball Team 2024
2024 intramural team.
Intramural Basketball Team 2023
2023 intramural team.
midrange
Midrange jumpshot.

Music

Sean playing the tuba
Tuba Scholarship at Pepperdine University!