University of Melbourne Research Fellow awarded Breakthrough Victoria Fellowship to advance AI skin cancer detection

(L–R): Dr Noor E Karishma Shaik, Breakthrough Victoria Fellow and Founder of DeepDerm; Dr Johan Vendrig, CIO of MoleMap (Industry Collaborator); and Professor Marimuthu Palaniswami (Academic Mentor).
(L–R): Dr Noor E Karishma Shaik, Breakthrough Victoria Fellow and Founder of DeepDerm; Dr Johan Vendrig, CIO of MoleMap (Industry Collaborator); and Professor Marimuthu Palaniswami (Academic Mentor).

University of Melbourne Research Fellow, Dr Noor E Karishma Shaik has been announced as one of three recipients of Breakthrough Victoria’s new Fellowship Program.

The Breakthrough Fellowship Program is a $7.5 million, multi-year initiative aimed at fostering research entrepreneurship in Victoria. It is projected to establish up to 50 new companies and create at least 50 jobs.

Each Fellow receives $150,000 to help them on their entrepreneurial journey.

Through her fellowship, Dr Shaik is commercialising her research as Founder of DeepDerm, developing AI-enabled cameras that detect skin cancer without painful biopsies.

“Traditional diagnostic approaches depend on visual assessment and biopsy confirmation, but this method has significant limitations – it frequently results in both missed diagnoses and unnecessary procedures,” said Dr Shaik

“With just a click, we can detect skin cancer and reduce the need for invasive procedures.”

She aims to make early detection affordable and accessible – especially in rural and underserved communities – and is turning this vision into reality through her research.

This addresses a critical gap in current diagnostic tools, where skin cancer is affecting two in three Australians by the age of 70 and accounting for 80% of newly diagnosed cancers annually.

Dr Shaik credits her research team, the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, as well as funding from Australia’s Economic Accelerator (AEA), for supporting the clinical translation of this scientific idea.

Dr Shaik is also a current participant in the Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre’s (MEC) Translating Research at Melbourne (TRAM) Runway program.

She joins an inaugural cohort of Breakthrough Fellows that includes innovators from Monash and RMIT, reflecting the strength and diversity of Victoria’s research commercialisation community.