Hiba Sinno, Office of Communications, [email protected]
From Psychology to Ophthalmology to Research Software Innovation: Alumnus Reflects on Being Open to Change
An AUB education not only prepares graduates to excel within their chosen field of study, but instills an appetite for intellectual curiosity and gives them the skills to pursue a multitude of career trajectories. Dr. Yehya Tlaiss (BS '19), who returned to his alma mater as one of the invited speakers during the AUB Pre-Medical Student Society's Medical Week, is a prime example of this.
After studying psychology at AUB and entering medicine with psychiatry in mind, he became fascinated by the complexity of vision and the structure of the eye itself. “I fell in love with it because the human eye is marvelous," he reflects. “The ability of seeing the eye from the inside is fascinating. It's a universe inside a very tiny thing."
Today, Dr. Tlaiss's work moves across psychology, medicine, research, and artificial intelligence, areas he sees, not as separate disciplines, but as different ways of understanding people and solving problems that can improve lives.
During his undergraduate years, Yehya immersed himself in academics and student life, serving as president of the Psychology Student Society and co-founding the AUB Beqaa Valley Club. He describes those years as formative, not only academically, but personally as well. “I had my foundational best years at AUB," he recalls. “It made me want to do something on a larger scale, something that affects human beings positively."
Although initially planning to pursue psychiatry, his direction changed during medical school. He realized that absorbing people's struggles too deeply made it difficult for him to separate work from emotion. “People's stories affected me deeply," he admits. After an ophthalmology rotation, he found a new calling: the human eye. “It's a window to the soul," Dr. Tlaiss says, “It's our perception of everything around us."
That same curiosity eventually expanded beyond clinical medicine. As his research career grew, accumulating dozens of PubMed-indexed publications and international collaborations, Dr. Tlaiss became increasingly aware of how difficult it could be for students to access research opportunities and find mentorship and guidance. Drawing on the research and statistics foundation he gained at AUB, he notes, “There is a huge problem. If you know someone, you can get in. If you've worked with someone, you can get in. But what if I don't want to do that?"
That frustration led to the creation of R-Chief, a medical research platform designed to make research collaboration more accessible, organized, and scalable. It connects students, residents, fellows, and physicians with active research opportunities while integrating AI-assisted tools to support project management, study design, manuscript development, and publication workflows. Recently, Dr. Tlaiss and the team at R-Chief Labs Ltd., a UK-registered medical technology company, expanded the initiative with the launch of the R-Chief mobile application, available on the App Store and Google Play. The platform has since been adopted by academic medical institutions in Lebanon and abroad.
Speaking to students navigating many of the same uncertainties he once faced, he encouraged them not to fear unfamiliar experiences or unconventional paths. “Don't be afraid if you find something new, if you find something challenging," he tells them. “Once you understand it, you might fall in love with it."