Arya Rao is an MD-PhD candidate in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program and chair of the Artificial Intelligence subgroup at the Medically Engineered Solutions in Healthcare (MESH) Incubator at Massachusetts General Hospital. At MESH, she leads a team of researchers developing AI-driven tools for clinical decision support, medical education, and health systems innovation. Her work includes AI-powered standardized patient models and clinical training technologies now deployed across Harvard-affiliated hospitals.

A recognized thought leader in applying AI to clinical training, Arya received both the 2024 Massachusetts Medical Society Information Technology Award and a Harvard Medical School Dean’s Innovation Award for her work. She has published extensively on medical AI in JAMA, NEJM AI,  JMIR, and more.

In parallel, Arya is pursuing her PhD in Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics at Harvard Medical School, where she develops novel AI systems that integrate evolutionary and genomic insights to advance precision therapeutics.