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November 5, 2025
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Mayo Clinic Education leaders have announced the recipients of the inaugural Richard M. Schulze Innovation Awards in Artificial Intelligence. Five pioneering projects that will transform how medical professionals learn, train, and deliver care were selected to receive the awards.
These awards, made possible through a generous gift from the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation, represent a decisive investment in educational innovation as the cornerstone of clinical excellence.
"The heart of this initiative is simple: better care for every patient," Mr. Schulze says. "By combining cutting-edge technology with the passion of emerging leaders, these projects will transform healthcare education and training to enhance how care is delivered. It's inspiring to see innovation used with purpose to create meaningful impact."
The investment in these projects demonstrates Mayo Clinic's commitment to advancing its Bold. Forward. strategy by addressing critical gaps in medical education through entrepreneurial artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Each initiative moves beyond incremental improvement to create groundbreaking and scalable solutions that will reshape healthcare education.
See who received the inaugural Richard M. Schulze Innovation Awards in Artificial Intelligence.
Breakthrough Project
"AI Surgical Training and Mixed Reality Avatar Laboratory"
Principal Investigators: Giselle Coelho, M.D., Ph.D., and W. David Freeman, M.D.
Project leaders will deploy 5D motion capture and AI-powered simulation to preserve neurosurgical expertise. The goal of this project is to transform key moments of surgical technique demonstration into perpetual teaching tools that deliver Mayo Clinic-caliber training to surgeons worldwide, regardless of geography or resources.
Individual Scholar Awards
"Mayo Clinic Human Optimization Project: Generative AI and Human Avatar"
Principal investigator: Christopher Camp, M.D.
Project leaders will explore how to harness retrieval-augmented AI to synthesize 450+ wellness topics into personalized coaching pathways. The project aims to use machine learning to adapt to individual responses, creating a virtual mentor that evolves with each learner's unique journey toward peak performance.
"AI Translation of Mayo Clinic Patient Education to Expand Global Reach"
Principal investigator: Sandhya Pruthi, M.D.
Project leaders will use natural language processing to preserve medical accuracy across linguistic boundaries. The objective is to ensure that AI translation maintains the clinical precision and empathetic tone that makes Mayo Clinic's educational content trusted worldwide.
Innovation Incubator Awards
"Benchmarking and Refinement of SBME Avatars With Digital-Twin Corpus"
Principal investigator: Misk Al Zahidy
Project leaders will create data-driven emotion vectors from annotated patient encounters to establish measurable standards for how AI-generated faces and voices must convey the subtle emotional cues essential to medical communication training.
"SafeGuardED: A Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)-Based AI Assistant for Trusted Resident Training"
Principal investigator: Antonio Jorge Forte, M.D., Ph.D.
Project leaders will implement retrieval-augmented generation with curated medical knowledge bases, which ensures AI responses link to verified sources. This approach will transform the current chatbot use in residency into accountable, traceable learning.
The impact of these awards
"These awards exemplify Mr. Schulze's belief that entrepreneurial innovation in education creates ripple effects throughout healthcare," says Fredric Meyer, M.D., Juanita Kious Waugh Executive Dean of Education at Mayo Clinic. "Each project addresses not just immediate educational needs but systemic challenges that, once solved, will elevate care delivery."
The five projects share three strategic imperatives: strengthening Mayo Clinic's educational excellence, embedding quality assurance into AI-driven learning, and creating reproducible models that scale beyond Mayo Clinic's walls. Within their twelve-month implementation period, the initiatives are expected to generate measurable improvements in training efficiency, clinical decision-making, and global health equity.
"Throughout his career, Mr. Richard Schulze has recognized that access to technology could profoundly change people’s lives," says John Poe, chair, Education Administration, Mayo Clinic. "These awards honor his vision by leveraging advancements in AI to ensure that our learners and staff have essential training, trusted knowledge, and the opportunity to advance pioneering ideas for the benefit of patients everywhere — ensuring the best in healthcare."
The Richard M. Schulze Innovation Awards in Artificial Intelligence represent more than funding for individual projects. As the projects move from innovation to implementation, they will generate evidence-based models that transform educational possibilities into clinical reality.