Kimia Ghobadi, a John C. Malone Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering (CaSE), has won a Johns Hopkins Discovery Award for her project, “Smart Room Monitoring: AI-Powered 3D Simulation for Multi-Factor Fall Hazard Detection in Healthcare Settings.” Team members include Erik Hoyer from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, along with Danielle Howe, Lee Stearns, and Alan Ravitz from the Applied Physics Lab.
The group’s project incorporates AI and advanced sensing technologies to stem the growing number of patient falls in hospitals, which can cause adverse outcomes, like physical injuries, increased patient fear, extended hospital stays, and even long-term care dependency.
The Discovery Awards program is designed to foster interdisciplinary collaborations across Hopkins divisions. This year, 39 teams were selected to receive awards from 274 proposals.
Current practice for identifying patient fall risk in hospitals typically relies on nurse managers who dedicate 30 to 45 minutes of every shift to manually reviewing a small set of patient rooms in each unit. The researchers say this approach can miss room safety changes that occur during a shift and leaves gaps in the overall assessment process, which is burdensome and prone to human error.
The team’s proposed prototype would employ a portable, multi-modal sensing system to scan and analyze patient rooms, automatically generating up-to-date safety reports while preserving patient privacy. Their approach incorporates patient information and evolving room conditions without needing physical interaction, which could significantly reduce the time and effort currently required for manual assessments.
The team’s prototype builds on previous research conducted by Ghobadi and Hoyer. Published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, their study explored how different fall risk assessments used by hospitals ultimately influence a patient’s fall risk, providing insight into the unique ways patient mobility affects fall outcomes.
“Our project aims to modernize how hospitals address patient mobility and falls by providing automated safety assessments that capture environmental changes—not just static snapshots,” said Ghobadi. “By combining 3D room scanning and AI, our system has the potential to reduce injury risk and enable the development of additional safety monitoring systems for patients.”
Dispersed annually, the Discovery Awards are based on a project’s innovativeness and potential long-term impact. Now in its tenth year, the 2025 Discovery Awards cycle saw 150 researchers from 12 Johns Hopkins entities selected for funding.
“At Johns Hopkins, we know our greatest strength lies in our collective commitment to discovery and impact,” said Provost Ray Jayawardhana. “By seeding cross-cutting partnerships that draw on the extraordinary talents of our faculty, the Discovery Awards promise to accelerate innovation and unlock the transformative potential at the intersection of disciplines. We are delighted to support this year’s recipients as they forge ambitious collaborations to address pressing questions.”
See the complete list of 2025 Discovery Award recipients.