About

Artificial intelligence is increasingly central to biomedical research, from medical imaging and genomics to drug design and clinical decision support. At the same time, the number of self-identified transgender people in the United States aged 18–34 has quadrupled over the past decade^[1], and recent polls indicate that 12% of adults in Germany identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community^[2]. Despite this growing visibility, scientific research on queer health—the physical, mental, and social health of LGBTQIA+ people—remains largely underrepresented in AI-driven biomedical research^[3,4]. This symposium aims to bridge AI research and queer health by fostering direct collaboration between AI researchers and experts in biology and medicine.

The symposium brings together researchers developing AI models for biomedical tasks with clinicians and scientists working on queer health topics. The goal is to expose AI researchers to open research questions, real-world clinical constraints, and meaningful use cases where AI could advance medical research and practice in queer health.

Topics

HIV

The HIV epidemic has infected an estimated 91.4 million people and claimed 44.1 million lives^[5], uniquely affecting queer communities. Beyond the biological toll, the virus has fractured social networks^[6], fostered deep intergenerational trauma^[7], and historically stigmatized community members^[8]. Marginalized groups remain at the highest risk: HIV prevalence among sex workers, men who have sex with men, and transgender people is 2.7, 7.6, and 8.5 times higher than the general adult population^[9]. A recent collapse in international funding threatens to reverse decades of progress.

Mental Health

Queer individuals experience significantly higher rates of mental health challenges driven by minority stress^[10]—both external stressors like discrimination^[11] and internalized stressors such as internalized homophobia or transphobia^[12] and identity concealment^[13]. Among LGBTQ+ young people, 66% report anxiety, 53% report depression, and 39% have seriously considered suicide^[15], with even higher rates for transgender and non-binary youth.

Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT)

Access to GAHT is associated with a 73% reduction in suicidal ideation within the first year of treatment for young people experiencing dysphoria^[16]. Modern advancements have significantly increased the safety profile of these treatments^[17]. Regret rates following gender-affirming surgery are less than 1%^[18]—lower than dissatisfaction rates for common elective procedures^[19]. Open research questions remain around long-term cardiovascular monitoring^[20] and pharmacogenomic variability in treatment response^[21,22].