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Biographies

Jiook Cha Assistant Professor of Neurobiology, Columbia University Dr. Cha studies the brain circuitry of maladaptive emotion and cognition across the lifespan. His goal is to develop an imaging-based assay for brain disorders that can be used in clinical settings. To this end, his current research focuses on assessing functional neuroanatomy in normal and disease states. Dr. Cha uses interdisciplinary science, such as brain imaging (e.g. MRI), cognitive and affective neuroscience (e.g., threat-safety learning), mathematical modeling (e.g., Bayesian learning theory), high-throughput image analysis (e.g., functional and structural connectivity or connectome mapping) using parallel computing, and computational analysis (e.g., machine learning). He studied Environmental and Ecological Engineering at Korea University (Bachelor of Science), Neurobiology at Catholic University of Korea (Master of Science), and Neuroscience at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (PhD; Advisor: Dr. Lillianne Mujica-Parodi). In 2016, he completed his postdoctoral research fellowship in the Posner Lab (directed by Dr. Jonathan E. Posner) and an NIMH–supported T32 research fellowship in the Eating Disorders Program (directed by Drs. Evelyn Attia and B. Timothy Walsh). In 2016, he started training in Patient-Oriented Research via the Career Development Award (KL2) supported by NIH CTSA (Clinical Translational Science Award) and the Irving Institute at Columbia University. In the same year, Dr. Cha was appointed as Assistant Professor of Neurobiology. His research has been funded by NIMH (K01), NARSAD (Young Investigator Award), Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (Young Investigator Award), CU-the University of Glasgow (Research Exchange Fellowship), and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (Pilot MRI awards).
Min Dong FG-A14H Vice-Chair, CAICT Min Dong, Senior Engineer, is the deputy director of the Smart Health Department of Cloud Computing & Big Data Research Institute in China Academy of Information and Communications Technology(CAICT). He is also the deputy secretary-general of the Internet Medical Health Industry Alliance. He joined the Health Promotion and Education Committee of the National Health Commission of China, and is the executive director of Telemedicine Professional Committee of Chinese Health Information Association. He leads the TC11 business platform and application group in China Communications Standards Association. He got his engineering master degree at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He has a long research experience in internet medical health, mobile internet, intelligent terminal and artificial intelligence, hosting and participating in many national science and technology major projects. He is also responsible for more than ten national or industry standards, over 30 papers in domestic and foreign journals and four patents.
M. Khair ElZarrad Deputy Director, Office of Medical Policy, CDER Dr. ElZarrad is the Deputy Director of the Office of Medical Policy (OMP) at FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), where he leads the development, coordination, and implementation of medical policy programs and strategic initiatives. Prior to joining the FDA, he served as Acting Director of the Clinical and Healthcare Research Policy Division with the Office of Science Policy at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At NIH he worked on policies related to human subject protections; the design, conduct, and oversight of clinical research; and enhancing quality assurance programs at pharmaceutical development and production facilities. Dr. ElZarrad currently leads multiple projects focused on exploring the potential utility of real-world evidence, innovative clinical trial designs, and the integration of technological advances in pharmaceutical development. He earned a doctoral degree in medical sciences with a focus on cancer metastases from the University of South Alabama, as well as a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Michele Ferrante Computational Neuroscientist, National Institute of Mental Health Michele Ferrante is a Computational Neuroscientist at National Institute of Mental Health. As a program officer, Dr. Ferrante oversees grants and funding opportunities for two extramural programs: the computational neuroscience program and computational psychiatry program. Dr. Ferrante is part of RDoC unit, the BRAIN Initiative, and the Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program. Dr. Ferrante is known for his computational and experimental work focusing on how biophysically-realistic properties of neurons may affect behavioral neuro-correlates, in hippocampal and prefrontal circuits. Dr. Ferrante did his MS in Clinical Psychology with Dr. Michele Migliore at the Italian National Research Council; his PhD in Computational Neuroscience with Dr. Giorgio Ascoli at George Mason University; his Postdoc in Experimental Electrophysiology and Modeling with Dr. Michael Hasselmo at Boston University.
George Hripcsak Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor, Columbia University George Hripcsak, MD, MS, is Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor and Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biomedical Informatics and Director of Medical Informatics Services for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia Campus. He is a board-certified internist with degrees in chemistry, medicine, and biostatistics. Dr. Hripcsak’s research focus is on the clinical information stored in electronic health records and on the development of next-generation health record systems. Using nonlinear time series analysis, machine learning, knowledge engineering, and natural language processing, he is developing the methods necessary to support clinical research and patient safety. He leads the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) coordinating center; OHDSI is an international network with 200 researchers. In precision medicine, he serves as a PI on Columbia’s eMERGE grant, Columbia’s regional recruitment center for the All of Us Research Psrogram, and Columbia’s role on the All of Us Data and Research Center. He co-chaired the Meaningful Use Workgroup of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. Dr. Hripcsak is a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, the American College of Medical Informatics, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published over 350 papers.
Ramesh Krishnamurthy FG-AI4H Vice-Chair, WHO Dr. Krishnamurthy serves as a senior technical officer and the focal point for eHealth standardization and interoperability efforts at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He has extensive experience in designing, implementing, coordinating, and managing national and subnational eHealth systems and services, including health information systems, emergency operations centers, and public health surveillance information systems. Dr. Krishnamurthy has also assisted numerous countries in all of the six WHO Regions in their development and implementation of national and sub-national eHealth strategies, standardization and interoperability of eHealth systems and services, and utilization of strategic information for evidence-based public health decision-making. Previously Dr. Krishnamurthy served as Senior Informatics Advisor at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. He holds many prestigious honors and awards.
Naomi Lee Executive Director (Digital), The Lancet Naomi Lee is the Executive Editor (Digital) at the leading medical journal The Lancet. Naomi handles peer review and commissioning in her specialist areas of surgery, digital medicine/AI, and medical technology. As part of the marketing and communications team, she is also leading the digital transformation of The Lancet group. Naomi trained in surgery, specialising in urology and has worked in the United Kingdom, Argentina, and Mexico. She studied medicine at Cambridge University and King’s College London, and data science at University College London. Naomi joined The Lancet in 2014.
Paul Lee Founder & CEO, Mind AI Paul is a clinician, scientist, and an entrepreneur. As a graduate of St Paul's School and University of Oxford with a degree in Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, he received an M.D. from The School of Medicine at Catholic University of Korea. Paul is also a graduate of Futuremed at Singularity University 2013 and Exponential Medicine 2014. As CEO & Cofounder of Curely and Kuddly, he grew the platform into one of the largest media channels in the US for the health and pet health industries with a viewership of over 6 Billion. He served in the Republic of Korea Army as a lieutenant doctor and a director of Pogok public health center in Yongin. Paul also cofounded JNP LAB in Seoul that acts as a development hub for global exponential technologies.
Geraldine McGinty Chief Strategy and Contracting Officer Assistant, Weill Cornell Medicine Dr. McGinty did her Medical training in Ireland at the National University and then came to the United States for residency at the University of Pittsburgh where she was Chief Resident. Her fellowship was in Women's Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital. While working at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx she completed an MBA at Columbia University. She is a national and internationally recognized expert in imaging economics. She has served an advisor to the CPT Editorial Panel, the JCAHO and the National Quality Forum. She was Chair of the American College of Radiology's Commission on Economics and was the radiology member of the AMA’s Relative Value Update Committee from 2012-2016. In May 2016 she was elected as the Vice Chair of the ACR's Board of Chancellors, the first woman to hold this office. She was until 2013 Managing Partner of a 70 physician multispecialty medical group on Long Island. In 2014 she joined the faculty at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) in New York City. As well as her clinical practice there she serves as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Contracting Officer for the Weill Cornell Physician Organization’s more than 1400 members. Her role as lead negotiator for managed care contracts at Weill Cornell Medicine incorporates both traditional fee for service agreements as well as shared savings arrangements. She is also a member of WCM’s digital health strategy team. She serves as a Non-Executive Director of IDA Ireland, the national foreign direct investment agency and is also on the Medical Advisory Board of Wellthie, a healthcare technology start-up. Her published work has focused on payment models for imaging, most recently a bundled payment for breast cancer screening. In 2015 she was voted Radiology’s Most Effective Educator by the readers of Aunt Minnie, a radiology news site with more than 140,000 members. She has more than 9000 followers on Twitter.
Mehul Mehta Vice President, Partners Healthcare International, Instructor, Harvard Medical School Mehul Mehta, MB;BS; MS; MA, is Vice President at Partners Healthcare International, an Instructor in Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, and Honorary Staff at Mass Eye & Ear. Mehul has worked internationally for the last 22 years, working in 30 countries. He has helped develop and reform health care, educational and research entities, with a focus on building capacity and creating and implementing differentiated, sustainable solutions. He helped develop the first internationally accredited hospitals in India, the first quality focused governance entity for a healthcare free zone in MENA, enterprise models for hospital systems including PPPs and innovation ecosystems in Asia. Mehul completed medical school and his ophthalmology training with honors from the University of Bombay, clinical training in retinal diseases at the Mass Eye & Ear and post-doctoral research at the Schepens Eye Research Institute. He obtained a Masters in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University. Mehul was a consultant with McKinsey and Company.
Mark Minevich Strategic Advisor & Digital Fellow, IPsoft, United States Mark Minevich is Strategic Advisor and Digital Fellow to IPsoft CEO, largest privately-owned cognitive enterprise company HQ in NYC heading up strategic initiatives designed to advance discussions and leadership around AI and the digital economy and Chairman of AI Pioneers. As the Executive Chair for the AI Pioneers Forum, Mark aims to unite leading AI research experts, digital champions, policy makers and cross-functional C level executives from leading organizations across multiple industries with unmatched peer exchange and idea sharing on critical AI business issues facing IT and business leaders today. The main mission Mark works towards with the AI Pioneers Forum is to create an evolving digital manifesto which delivers a future roadmap to real returns on AI. Minevich currently serves as senior fellow, AI & emerging technology, for the United States Council on Competitiveness in Washington DC and a senior advisor of global innovation & technology for the United Nations Office of Project Services (UNOPS). He is also an appointed member of the B20 digital taskforce for the G20 as an expert in digitization, advanced autonomous systems, and the future of AI for 2017 and 2018 in Germany and Argentina. Mark served as a venture advisor to Global Emerging Markets, a $3.4 billion alternative investment group that manages a diverse set of investment vehicles.
Itsik Pe'er Associate Professsor, Columbia University Itsik Pe'er is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University, and in the Department of Systems Biology at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Columbia University Irving Medical Campus. He serves as the Chair of the Center for Health Analytics at the university's Data Science Institute. Prof. Pe'er received his training in computer science at Tel Aviv University cross training in molecular genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Prof. Pe'er develops computational methofs for inferring insights from high throughput genomic data, and made contributions to understanding the genetics of hidden relatedness and isolated populations.
Sameer Pujari WHO Currently with WHO, he is helping manage the mHEALTH for NCDs as part of the secretariat for the flagship WHO and ITU joint program on mHealth for Non-Communicable Diseases; Be He@lthy Be Mobile which was awarded the WHO DGs Excellence Award this year. With WHO since 2008, he has also provided technical advise and support to over 50 countries in the development of surveillance and management information systems. He is also a core member of the Health Data Forum at WHO and the co-chair of the WHO mHEALTH working group. Before coming to WHO, he worked with the US Governments health agency helping various countries build informatics systems for immunization and vaccination programs in Asia Europe and Africa. He started his career working with WHO's National Polio Surveillance Project in India for 7 years, where he led the development and implementation of various information management systems for surveillance across the country. He holds bachelor degrees in business and software engineering and a master's degree with a gold medal in management, he also has an earned fellowship in public health informatics from the US government health and human services.
Dr. Jean Louis Raisaro Post-doctoral Researcher, Lausanne University Hospital Dr. Jean Louis Raisaro is a post-doctoral researcher within the Precision Medicine Unit at the Lausanne University Hospital (Switzerland) and scientific project manager within the team of Data Science & Research of the Direction of Information Systems. Jean Louis earned his PhD in Computer and Communication Sciences from EPFL (Switzerland) in Feb. 2018 with a Thesis on the protection of health-data privacy. In particular, his work focuses on developing advanced privacy-enhancing technologies for the protection of clinical and genomic data. Prior to this, he earned his MSc and BSc degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pavia (Italy) in 2012 and 2009 respectively, with specialization in Biomedical Informatics and Bioinformatics. His research interests lie at the intersection of secure systems, privacy-enhancing technologies, applied cryptography and biomedical informatics. He is an active contributor of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN), the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Security Work Stream and he collaborates with numerous national and international partners. He is an author of several academic publications about genomic privacy in both CS and biomedical top journals and conferences.
Narges Razavian Assistant Professor, New York University Narges Razavian is an assistant professor with joint appointment at departments of Radiology and Population health at NYU Langone Medical Center. Her lab focuses on various applications of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for medicine, and they work with Medical Images, Clinical Notes, Electronic Health Records and Genomics data. Before NYU Langone, she was a postdoc at CILVR lab at NYU Courant CS department, working with Prof. David Sontag, and prior to that she received her PhD at CMU Computational Biology group.
Archana Reddy Regulatory Affairs Professional Archana is an experienced Regulatory Affairs professional with 18 years of experience working throughout the life cycle of product development from the Pre-IND to the post approval phase in a variety of settings, including FDA/CDER, small, medium and large biopharmaceutical/pharmaceutical companies. She has been responsible for leading strategy, submissions, and compliance in a multitude of therapeutic areas including womenâ€™s health, oncology, cardiovascular/metabolism, Neurology and endocrinology.She holds a BA from Vanderbilt in Chemistry/Spanish, an MS in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins, and a MPH in Health Policy from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia. She completed a Pre-IRTA fellowship in breast cancer research at NCI.
Paul Sajda Professor, Columbia University Paul Sajda is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Radiology (Physics) at Columbia University. He is also a Member of Columbia’s Data Science Institute. He received a BS in electrical engineering from MIT in 1989 and an MSE and PhD in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, in 1992 and 1994, respectively. Professor Sajda is interested in what happens in our brains when we make a rapid decision and, conversely, what processes and representations in our brains drive our underlying preferences and choices, particularly when we are under time pressure. His work in understanding the basic principles of rapid decision-making in the human brain relies on measuring human subject behavior simultaneously with cognitive and physiological state. Important in his approach is his use of machine learning and data analytics to fuse these measurements for predicting behavior and infer brain responses to stimuli. Professor Sajda applies the basic principles he uncovers to construct real-time brain-computer interfaces that are aimed at improving interactions between humans and machines. He is also applying his methodology to understand how deficits in rapid decision-making may underlie and be diagnostic of many types of psychiatric diseases and mental illnesses. Professor Sajda is a co-founder of several neurotechnology companies and works closely with a range of scientists and engineers, including neuroscientists, psychologists, computer scientists, and clinicians. He is a fellow of the IEEE, AMBIE and AAAS and Chair of the IEEE Brain Initiative.
Marcel Salathé FG-A14H Vice-Chair, EPFL Marcel Salathé is Associate Professor at EPFL and head of the Digital Epidemiology Lab. His interest lies in combining machine learning with the broad usage of online mobile technology to build innovative health systems. He is also deeply involved in online education as academic director of the EPFL Extension School.
Arun Shroff Co-founder & CTO at Medindia; Director of Technology & Innovation, STAR Associates, United States Arun and his team are currently applying the latest advances in Artificial Intelligence for detecting and diagnosing diseases at scale, including a solution for early detection of Diabetic Retinopathy, a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Arun believes technology and Artificial Intelligence are crucial to solving many global health challenges, particularly in the developing and underserved areas of the world, by bridging critical gaps in the shortage of specialists and resources. Arun is also Director of Technology & Innovation at STAR Associates, USA, providing strategic and advisory services to early stage technology companies in Artificial Intelligence, Augmented / Virtual Reality, robotics, blockchain, health and telemedicine. Arun is a frequent speaker and invited expert on technology and Artificial Intelligence at events and conferences globally. Arun has a B.Tech from IIT Madras, MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad, a M.S. in Computer Science from Penn State University & specializations in AI and Machine Learning from Stanford and Coursera. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter (@arunshroff).
Thomas Wiegand FG-AI4H Chair, Fraunhofer HHI Thomas Wiegand is a professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin and is jointly heading the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, Berlin, Germany. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University and co-founded several startup companies. For his research and publications, he received numerous awards. Thomson Reuters named him in their list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” as one of the most cited researchers in his field. He has been elected to the German National Acdemy of Engineering (Acatech) and the National Academy of Science (Leopoldina). He is a recipient of the ITU150 Award. Since 1995, he has been an active participant in standardization for multimedia with many successful submissions to ITU-T and ISO/IEC. In 2000, he was appointed as the Associated Rapporteur of ITU-T VCEG.