Dr. James Cimino became the inaugural director of the Informatics Institute at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 2015 and then inaugural chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science in 2024. Prior to UAB, he was on faculty in Biomedical Informatics and Medicine at Columbia University for 20 years, followed by 7 years as Director of the Laboratory for Informatics Development at the NIH Clinical Center and the National Library of Medicine. He is Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the American College of Physicians, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and winner of the American Medical Informatics Association’s Morris F. Collen Award for Excellence. He was appointed Adjoint Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on November 1, 2023. 

Research interests: Medical concept representation, controlled vocabulary, biomedical informatics, medical decision making
UAB Email: jamescimino@uabmc.edu

Protiva Rahman, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor in the Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics Department at the University of Florida, with an adjunct appointment in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at VUMC. Previously Dr. Rahman completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Biomedical Informatics at VUMC and received her PhD in Computer Science from the Ohio State University in 2020. 

Dr. Rahman is interested in building tools to democratize data science, with a focus on empowering domain experts in healthcare. Her research spans the disciplines of data science, natural language processing, and human-computer interaction in domains of infectious diseases and cancer. Her overarching goal is to bridge the gap between data and domain experts. To this end, her PhD thesis presented a framework to amplify expertise in clinical data pipelines while her postdoctoral work aimed to automate data extraction from unstructured texts such as EHR notes and biomedical literature using NLP. 

Dr. Karnes' primary area of research interest is cardiovascular and immune pharmacogenomics, specifically investigating the utility of genetic polymorphisms to predict adverse drug reactions. He employs a translational approach to investigate pharmacogenomic associations using observational studies, functional genomics techniques, and eventually prospective clinical trials. his ultimate career goal is to facilitate personalized cardiovascular medicine and genotype-guided prescribing to avoid serious drug toxicities. 

Dr. Karnes also serves as the Director of Scientific Programs for the University of Arizona-Banner All of Us Research Program. He is an author on over 60 peer-reviewed manuscripts and over 30 abstracts presented at national and international meetings. He's active in multiple professional societies including the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. 

He has received support for his research from the American Heart Association, the Flinn Foundation, the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, and the NIH, including R01 and K01 grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Visit Dr. Karnes' faculty website here and laboratory website here for more information. 
Follow Dr. Karnes on Twitter @jasonhkarnes
A full list of publications can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/jason.karnes.1/bibliography/public/

Christopher Lindsell is a collaborative biostatistician who is a leader in the application of rigorous of biostatistical methods in the acute care environment, and to the intersection between emergency care and public health. He is currently the Director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at VUMC.

He has led data coordinating centers for numerous multi-center clinical trials, including FDA-regulated trials, and for epidemiological studies. He holds patents on risk stratification in septic shock, and he has contributed significantly to a number of NIH-funded networks, including the CTSA. His current focus is on learning health systems, leveraging clinical processes and data systems to enhance learning from pragmatic trials and observational studies, and for designing and implementing dissemination and implementation research.

PhD, Epidemiology, University of Southampton

Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) president, 2020 - 2021

Associate Director, Center for Clinical Quality and Improvement Research, 2017 - 2021

Juan Zhao, PhD, is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at VUMC and Director of Data Science at the American Heart Association. Dr. Zhao achieved a PhD in Computer Science from the University Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her work was supported by the American Heart Association (AHA) and NIH grants. 

Research Interests: Leveraging machine learning, data mining, and natural language processing techniques on Electronic health records and multi-omics data to advance deep phenotyping and disease prediction. Also interested in Blockchain technology in healthcare and Internet-of-Things (IoT). 

Claude J. Pirtle, MD, MBA, MSACI, FACP, FAMIA, serves as the Interim Executive Director and Chief Digital and Informatics Officer of Heartland Whole Health Institute.

Prior to Heartland Whole Health Institute and Walmart Health, Dr. Pirtle served as the Vice President - Chief Medical Information Officer for West Tennessee Healthcare and Assistant Chief Medical Officer of Jackson Madison County General Hospital, a 792-bed tertiary hospital in Tennessee. In these roles, he co-led a complete enterprise ambulatory Epic conversion, implemented a system-wide telehealth and remote monitoring program, and led teams to redefine healthcare in a proactive and holistic approach. He also served as the Medical Director and Performance Improvement Committee Chair for the Connected Care of West Tennessee Accountable Care Organization (ACO). 

Dr. Pirtle earned his Bachelor of Science in biochemistry from Louisiana State University with a minor in both chemistry and psychology. He earned his medical doctorate at Louisiana State University Health and Science Center (LSUHSC) in New Orleans, LA and completed his internal medicine residency also at LSUHSC. Dr. Pirtle completed his clinical informatics fellowship and a Master of Science in Applied Clinical Informatics from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Pirtle is board certified in internal medicine and clinical informatics. He also serves on the Board of Directors of QSource and was the Lead Clinical Advisor to Tactuum. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association. 

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Twitter: @cpirtlemd