News: Early-Career Researcher from the University of Regensburg to Attend the 2026 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 

A special honor for emerging researchers at the University of Regensburg: doctoral researcher Zeineb Sassi from the Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine has been selected to participate in the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. The prestigious forum brings together Nobel Laureates and outstanding early-career researchers from around the world and is widely recognized as one of the most important international platforms for scientific exchange.

Sassi is among approximately 600 young scientists worldwide chosen through a highly competitive international selection process. In addition, she is one of only twelve researchers invited to present their work as part of the “Next Generation in Life Science” program, which highlights particularly promising research and emerging scientific leaders.

Her research focuses on a timely and increasingly important question: How do patients experience and interact with AI  when it becomes part of medical decision-making? In her doctoral work, Sassi investigates the role of AI-based decision support systems (AI-DSS) in transplant medicine, combining perspectives from psychology and medical informatics.

In her PhD study, Sassi interviewed kidney transplant patients who encountered an AI-DSS during their follow-up care. The machine learning-based system generates individualized risk predictions and presents them in a format designed to support communication between physicians and patients. The study aimed to explore how the integration of AI influences trust, responsibility, and decision-making in clinical practice.

The findings show that acceptance of AI depends less on technical performance alone and more on how AI-generated information is integrated into patient care. Participants particularly valued transparency, understandable explanations, and opportunities to discuss AI-generated recommendations with their physicians. While many patients viewed AI as highly capable of analyzing large amounts of medical data, they also emphasized the continuing importance of human judgment, empathy, and consideration of individual life circumstances.

“The key question is not only what AI calculates, but how its outputs are integrated into interactions between physicians and patients,” says Sassi. “As AI becomes more deeply embedded in healthcare, we must ensure that transparency, trust, and patient participation remain at the center of care.”

Through her research, Sassi contributes to a growing understanding of human-AI interaction in high-risk medical settings and supports the development of patient-centered approaches to the responsible use of AI in healthcare. Her invitation to Lindau recognizes the scientific significance of this work and provides an opportunity to engage with leading researchers and Nobel Laureates from around the world.

Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: https://www.lindau-nobel.org/de/ (external link, opens in a new window)
Study: doi: 10.2196/83195
Blog post: https://blog.uni-regensburg.de/ai-at-the-moment-of-critical-decisions (external link, opens in a new window)