Ashkan Pirmani

Leuven, Belgium 🇧🇪

STADIUS - Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT) - KU Leuven ;
Biomedical Research Institute - Uhasselt

Ashkan got his master degree in industrial engineering in 2018, and after that, did another master’s in MBA. He started his adventure as a double degree Ph.D student in mid-2019 with the close collaboration of KU Leuven’s STADIUS/ESAT lab and the Biomedical data science research group of Hasselt University in Belgium. He is currently working on federated learning frameworks to apply this framework in health and big data using real-world data. He believes in FAIR data. As “Accessibility” is one of these FAIR data principles, He aims to launch the infrastructures and frameworks that support and learns from other data sources without sacrificing the privacy of real-world data and enabling collaborative learning. He believes we have already passed the centralized data silos era for big data research, and we should come up with ideas to infer how to learn from data, of course, by considering all the ethical and legal challenges. His other research interests are Machine Learning, Collaborative Learning, Decentralization, and MLOps, with a keen interest in containerization and Dashboard Design.

news

Nov 16, 2022	This would be honour to present “The use of AI and great real-world data to reveal MS progression: Landscape and future perspectives” at MS Data Alliance Stakeholder Engagement Meeting 2022 (Wednesday 16 November 2022). “The use of Artificial Intelligence and Great Data to reveal progression in MS” is the title of the conferance. This conference would be Baveno Italy 🇮🇹.
Sep 6, 2022	Super thrilled to announce that my application to attend Oxford Machine Learning Summer School both ML x Health and ML x Finance tracks, in-person, has been successful. So excited to attend this fascinting summer school at Oxford UK 🇬🇧. OxML had an overwhelming number of applicants from 106 countries this year. More Information

selected publications

GDSI
Updated Results of the COVID-19 in MS Global Data Sharing Initiative

Steve Simpson-Yap, Ashkan Pirmani, Tomas Kalincik, and 42 more authors

Neurology - Neuroimmunology Neuroinflammation 2022

Abs Bib HTML PDF

Background and Objectives Certain demographic and clinical characteristics, including the use of some disease-modifying therapies (DMTs), are associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection severity in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Comprehensive exploration of these relationships in large international samples is needed.Methods Clinician-reported demographic/clinical data from 27 countries were aggregated into a data set of 5,648 patients with suspected/confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). COVID-19 severity outcomes (hospitalization, admission to intensive care unit [ICU], requiring artificial ventilation, and death) were assessed using multilevel mixed-effects ordered probit and logistic regression, adjusted for age, sex, disability, and MS phenotype. DMTs were individually compared with glatiramer acetate, and anti-CD20 DMTs with pooled other DMTs and with natalizumab.Results Of 5,648 patients, 922 (16.6%) with suspected and 4,646 (83.4%) with confirmed COVID-19 were included. Male sex, older age, progressive MS, and higher disability were associated with more severe COVID-19. Compared with glatiramer acetate, ocrelizumab and rituximab were associated with higher probabilities of hospitalization (4% [95% CI 1–7] and 7% [95% CI 4–11]), ICU/artificial ventilation (2% [95% CI 0–4] and 4% [95% CI 2–6]), and death (1% [95% CI 0–2] and 2% [95% CI 1–4]) (predicted marginal effects). Untreated patients had 5% (95% CI 2–8), 3% (95% CI 1–5), and 1% (95% CI 0–3) higher probabilities of the 3 respective levels of COVID-19 severity than glatiramer acetate. Compared with pooled other DMTs and with natalizumab, the associations of ocrelizumab and rituximab with COVID-19 severity were also more pronounced. All associations persisted/enhanced on restriction to confirmed COVID-19.Discussion Analyzing the largest international real-world data set of people with MS with suspected/confirmed COVID-19 confirms that the use of anti-CD20 medication (both ocrelizumab and rituximab), as well as male sex, older age, progressive MS, and higher disability are associated with more severe course of COVID-19.aβ=adjusted β; BMI=body mass index; COVID-19=coronavirus disease 2019; DMT=disease-modifying therapy; EDSS=Expanded Disability Status Scale; ICU=intensive care unit; MS=multiple sclerosis; RRMS=relapsing-remitting MS
@article{Simpson-Yape200021, author = {Simpson-Yap, Steve and Pirmani, Ashkan and Kalincik, Tomas and De Brouwer, Edward and Geys, Lotte and Parciak, Tina and Helme, Anne and Rijke, Nick and Hillert, Jan A. and Moreau, Yves and Edan, Gilles and Sharmin, Sifat and Spelman, Tim and McBurney, Robert and Schmidt, Hollie and Bergmann, Arnfin B. and Braune, Stefan and Stahmann, Alexander and Middleton, Rod M. and Salter, Amber and Bebo, Bruce and Van der Walt, Anneke and Butzkueven, Helmut and Ozakbas, Serkan and Boz, Cavit and Karabudak, Rana and Alroughani, Raed and Rojas, Juan I. and van der Mei, Ingrid A. and Sciascia do Olival, Guilherme and Magyari, Melinda and Alonso, Ricardo N. and Nicholas, Richard S. and Chertcoff, Anibal S. and de Torres, Ana Zabalza and Arrambide, Georgina and Nag, Nupur and Descamps, Annabel and Costers, Lars and Dobson, Ruth and Miller, Aleisha and Rodrigues, Paulo and Pr{\v c}kovska, Vesna and Comi, Giancarlo and Peeters, Liesbet M.}, title = {Updated Results of the COVID-19 in MS Global Data Sharing Initiative}, volume = {9}, number = {6}, elocation-id = {e200021}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1212/NXI.0000000000200021}, publisher = {Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the American Academy of Neurology}, journal = {Neurology - Neuroimmunology Neuroinflammation} }