Organizing Committee
Zhongming Zhao, PhD, FACMI, FAMIA, FAIMBE, Lead Chair
Zhongming Zhao, Ph.D., M.S. is a professor at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston, formerly UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics (SBMI) and appointed as the Chair for Precision Health. He is the founding director of the Center for Precision Health, which is a joint venture between McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics and the UTHealth School of Public Health. Before coming to UTHealth, Zhao was a tenured professor in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics, Psychiatry and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and held Ingram Professorship of Cancer Research. He also served as the chief bioinformatics officer of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), the director of the VICC Bioinformatics Resource Center, director of the Bioinformatics and Systems Medicine Laboratory and the associate director of the Vanderbilt Center for Quantitative Sciences. Zhao is a member of numerous organizations including the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG). He has more than 24 years of bioinformatics, genomics, machine learning/AI, and pharmacogenomics research experience, collaborated with more than 100 investigators, and has authored/co-authored more than 450 papers (cited by >21,000 times, H-index = 75). His work has been supported by more than 50 funded grants totaling more than $100 million. Dr. Zhao was elected as a fellow in the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI), the American Medical Informatics Association (FAMIA), and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
Mattia Prosperi, MD, Co-Chair
Dr. Prosperi's research covers health AI and epidemiology informatics, with a focus on ‘causal AI’ working on multi-domain, multi-domain big data –socioeconomic, ecological, clinical, and genomics. His administrative mission is to expand AI educational programs, research, corporate relationships, and global reputation.
Yves A. Lussier, MD, FACMI, FAMIA, Co-Chair
Dr. Lussier, is a notable figure in biomedical informatics, currently serving as Professor and Chair of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah School of Medicine. With a background as an engineer and physician-scientist, he’s an authority in translational bioinformatics, known for his research on informatics techniques, ontologies, artificial intelligence of micro-cohorts, and personalized medicine. Previously, he held leadership roles and initiated informatics research and service groups at Columbia University, The NIAID Northeast Biodefense Center, The University of Illinois Health Sciences, The University of Chicago Cancer Center, and The University of Arizona Health Sciences.
As a leader in the fields of translational bioinformatics and of AI-augmented precision medicine, he has launched successful companies and international conferences, authored more than 200 publications, and delivered more than 100 invited presentations in precision medicine, systems medicine, and translational bioinformatics, including 28 opening keynotes at international conferences. He has been awarded $200M in grants as principal, core leader, or co-investigator, and mentored or co-mentored over 100 graduates, postgraduate fellows, and junior faculty members. Dr. Lussier’s honors include three IBM Faculty Awards, inducted Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI), 1st recipient of the Columbia University Faculty Mentoring Award, “Ambassador for Health Sciences” at the University of Sherbrooke (Canada), and 16 outstanding publication awards from the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), and the Translational Bioinformatics Conference (TBC). In 2016, Dr. Lussier was invited among ten USA academic leaders invited by the White House for its Precision Medicine Summit.