La Frontera 2021: Population Health: AI, Big Data, and Analytics
You’re invited! Join us for the annual La Frontera: Exploring the Cutting Edge of Science event, hosted by the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine’s Office for Research, Department of Population Health Sciences, and the Institute for Health Promotion Research.
What is La Frontera?
La Frontera is a symposium that brings distinguished speakers together from different backgrounds to attack a common problem from multiple angles. Our sole mission is to challenge conventional thinking to create greater impact.
The Department of Population Health Sciences plays an integral role in Long School of Medicine research and academic missions by enhancing programs to prevent disease, promote health, deliver quality healthcare, and inform health policy decisions.
As technology advances, so do the methods we use in healthcare to make precise assessments, quicker. We utilize population statistics and research, Big Data, to make advancements in healthcare for the greater well-being of our communities.
La Frontera 2021 will focus on the different ways big data and AI will be used in future health research to treat, prevent, and potentially cure diseases, as well as reduce medical costs.
La Frontera Session Moderator
Amelie G. Ramirez, DrPH, MPH, Chair and Professor of Population Health Sciences and Director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio
Amelie G. Ramirez, DrPH, is an internationally recognized health disparities researcher at UT Health San Antonio and a member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2006. Dr. Ramirez is the Chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences and founding director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio. She is also the MCC Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement. Dr. Ramirez has years of experience in conducting behavioral and communications projects to reduce cancer, prove the efficacy of patient navigation for cancer patients, and improve healthy lifestyles among our underrepresented communities in South Texas and nationally.
Agenda
| Day | Topic | Presenter |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday, October 13th | Welcome/Opening Remarks | Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., Director of Institute for Health Promotion Research, Chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio, Chair of La Frontera 2021 Session |
| Healthcare Analytics: Building a Solid Foundation | Bradley B. Brimhall, M.D., M.P.H. | |
| Mimic, Aggregate, Improve: How AI Enhances Human Experts | David Chambers, B.S., M.S. | |
| Applied AI with Radiogenomics | Kal L. Clark, M.D. | |
| Confluence of AI & Human Wellbeing | Dhireesha Kudithipudi, Ph.D. | |
| A Look at the Quality of Data Commonly Available through Clinical Data Warehouses: Implications for Their Use | Meredith Nahm Zozus, Ph.D. | |
| Closing Remarks | Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., Director of Institute for Health Promotion Research, Chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio, Chair of La Frontera 2021 Session |
Featured Speakers
Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Medical Director of Laboratory Medicine, Director of Clinical Informatics Healthcare Analytics, Bioinformatics, Staff Pathologist, Hematopathology & Transfusion Medicine, UT Health San Antonio, Long School of Medicine and University Health System, San Antonio
Program Director, Clinical Informatics Fellowship, Long School of Medicine, San Antonio
Biography
Dr. Brimhall is a Professor of Pathology and Director of Laboratory Medicine and Clinical Informatics/Healthcare Analytics at UT Health San Antonio. He is also Program Director for the Clinical Informatics Fellowship. Dr. Brimhall earned his M.D. at Stanford Medical School. He completed internship and residency training in pathology (anatomic and clinical) and fellowship training in transfusion medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He completed hematopathology training at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio. He received an M.P.H. in health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health as well as a postgraduate certificate in bioinformatics from the Canadian Genetic Diseases Network and the University of British Columbia. Dr. Brimhall is board certified in anatomic and clinical pathology, hematopathology, and clinical informatics. His current areas of focus include the development of predictive models and artificial intelligence/machine learning employing large discrete healthcare data sources and histopathology images.
Principal Engineer and AI Researcher
Southwest Research Institute
Biography
David Chambers (B.S., M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Oklahoma) is a Principal Engineer and AI researcher. In his current role at Southwest Research Institute (www.swri.org), he develops solutions for a wide array of government and commercial clients, developing custom computer vision algorithms for autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems, manufacturing automation, medical imaging, and markerless motion capture. David has a passion for designing machine-learning solutions that integrate physical and geometric constraints to improve and regularize behavior. As part of Southwest Research Institute’s Human Performance Initiative, he developed and evaluated the neural network and associated tools for predicting human pose from a multi-camera system. Working with a team of AI researchers and pathologists at the University of Texas at San Antonio Health Science Center (UTHSCSA), he developed a custom neural network for predicting cancer cellularity from Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) for breast cancer, creating an entry to the BreastPathQ medical imaging challenge which won first place in the international competition. Mr. Chambers continues this research as an appointed adjunct specialist at UTHSCSA.
Associate Professor/Clinical
Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, UT Health San Antonio
Vice Chair for Informatics
Biography
Kal Clark MD is the Vice-Chair of Informatics and an Associate Professor of Radiology. His primary clinical expertise is emergency and trauma radiology in the Division of Emergency Radiology. Academic interests include artificial intelligence as it relates to error mitigation, disease classification, disease diagnosis, radiation safety, and general quality improvement. He is a member of the UTSA MATRIX AI Consortium for Human Well-Being and the UT System CAID (Consortium for AI in Diagnostics). Dr. Clark is fellowship-trained in neuroradiology. He completed his medical training at the Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine and completed his radiology residency and neuroradiology fellowship at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Professor and Robert F. McDermott Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director of the MATRIX AI Consortium, UTSA
Biography
Dhireesha Kudithipudi, Ph.D., is the Founding Director of the MATRIX AI Consortium, Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Robert F McDermott Endowed Chair. Dr. Kudithipudi joined the College of Engineering after practicing as a professor, graduate program chair, and director of the Neuromorphic AI (Nu.AI) Lab in the Department of Computer Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology. Over the past decade, her research team has paved a path to creating artificial intelligence platforms inspired by the brain. Her research lab developed neuromemristive AI platforms with continual learning capabilities.
Her current research interests are in neuromorphic computing, brain inspired neural algorithms, novel computing substrates (memristors and 3D-ICs), energy efficient machine intelligence, and AI-on-Chip. Dr. Kudithipudi received her BTech in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Nagarjuna University, MS in Computer Engineering from Wright State University, and PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Professor
Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, UT Health San Antonio
Division Chief, Clinical Research Informatics
Biography
Dr. Meredith Zozus recently joined the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA)Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, Population Health Sciences Department Clinical Research Informatics Division cine as the Director for Clinical Research Informatics and the Clinical Informatics Research Division Chief. Prior to joining UTHSCSA, Zozus was associate professor of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). At UAMS she led a very active research program in Clinical Research Informatics focusing on methods to improve the design, conduct, and reporting of clinical studies, primarily in the areas of data quality in healthcare and health-related research and secondary use of EHR data. Zozus joined UAMS in 2016 after an 18-year career at Duke University where she served as the director for the data center at the Duke Clinical Research Institute and the associate director for Clinical Research Informatics in the Duke Translational Medicine Institute. In addition to multiple published articles, she has led the development of eight national/international data standards, serves as the Chief Editor for the Good Clinical Data Management Practices international practice standard for clinical research data management and recently published The Data Book, covering fundamental principles behind the collection and management of research data.