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Dr. Karen Eilbeck Appointed New Interim Chair

Dr. Michael Good, Senior VP, Health Sciences, announced the appointment of Karen Eilbeck, PhD, as interim chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Her appointment was effective July 12, 2019.

Dr. Eilbeck is a professor of Biomedical Informatics. She has served as vice-chair of education in the department and has chaired the curriculum committee for several years. She also chairs the capstone committee for the department’s non-thesis master program. 

Dr. Eilbeck earned both her MSc degree in Bioinformatics and her PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Manchester in England. She did postdoctoral training in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. Prior to moving to Utah, she was a scientist at Celera Genomics in Maryland, and at the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Within the School of Medicine, Dr. Eilbeck teaches the Foundations of Bioinformatics core course to first-year graduate students, is a medical school domain expert for informatics, and co-directs the Phase-2 course: Host and Defense. She completed a one-year certificate in Educational Scholarship with the University of Utah Academy of Health Science Educators.

In the coming weeks, the School of Medicine will initiate a national search for the next chair of our department. We are excited to welcome Dr. Eilbeck in her new role as interim chair in the department.