Current Students

Mahnoor (Noor) Ahmed is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Biomedical Informatics and Data Science program. Her research interests lie at the intersection of digital health and clinical informatics. Noor holds a B.A. in neuroscience from Vanderbilt University, and a M.Eng. from Duke University in biomedical engineering. She joins Johns Hopkins University with several years of experience in health care operations and digital health policy.

Tunde is a Survey Statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics. He works on the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey which is a probability survey that assesses ambulatory care utilization at non-federal hospitals in the United States. He has a Bachelor’s in Biochemistry from Babcock University (Nigeria), an MSPH in Microbiology and Emerging Infectious Diseases from GWU Milken Institute School of Public Health, and a Certificate in Spatial Analysis in Public Health from the JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is interested in data analytics and infectious diseases as they pertain to ambulatory care and public health.

Victoria Alms currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She works for Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in molecular diagnostics and collaborate very closely with physicians within the medical field. She was born and raised in Maryland, but moved away to Georgia for college to pursue a degree in Genetics. She has three sisters that she loves dearly, and a dog. Victoria is fluent in Spanish, She loves to read, and  loves music. Victoria has played the piano since four years old, and learned to read sheet music before she could read in school.  She taught herself to play the guitar at  twelve years old. Victoria is excited to begin this new chapter in her career in applied sciences informatics and data science, and looks forward to what the coming years have to offer.  

Born and raised in Damascus, Syria; Waddah completed medical school at Damascus University Faculty of Medicine and completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Indiana University. Waddah received advanced training through a Hematology‐Oncology fellowship at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine at Madison. During his time in Madison, he would drive to Epic Electronic Health Record (EHR) Headquarters to complete Physician Builder Courses (Basic and Advanced) and earned certification in both and took the Advanced Analytics course. This (in addition to prior passion about IT) was the introduction to clinical informatics. He started his career at UTSW as an Assistant Professor of Genitourinary Medical Oncology treating kidney, bladder, testicular and prostate cancer. Upon his arrival, Waddah joined the UTSW health system’s CMIO team as a deputy CMIO representing the Cancer Center and later was appointed as the Director of the newly established Cancer Clinical Informatics office at SCCC.

Emily grew up in Northern Virginia and moved to San Francisco in 2014 after graduating from Virginia Tech, where she studied Dietetics and Exercise Science.  For the last 5 years, she's worked at Salesforce, developing and managing strategic technology partnerships within the Healthcare and Life Sciences industry. She's a certified yoga instructor and an avid skier who loves trying new restaurants and fitness classes, cooking vegetarian dishes, live music, time on the water and long weekend hikes. Emily has raised 50k for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's disease and hopes to continue that fundraising effort into the future.

Haibin Bai is a graduate student of the Health Informatics Research Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received his Master degree in Health Policy and Management from Seoul National University. His research interests are Public Health Informatics and Digital Health.

Anas is an experienced Health Data Scientist with a background in software and data engineering and a demonstrated history of leading and implementing data science projects in healthcare. Prior to joining the PhD program in Health Sciences Informatics at JHU, Anas earned two master’s degrees in computer engineering and systems medicine, and has over 10 years of professional and research experience. He worked as a research faculty at the Innovation Center for Biomedical Informatics (ICBI) at Georgetown University, where he led research efforts in clinical informatics and health IT, and taught in the Master's program in Health Informatics & Data Science. As a lead data scientist for Georgetown University Medical center, he designed and built clinical research data warehouses and developed predictive models for disease risks, outcomes, and adverse events using EHR, omics, and behavioral data. His work has contributed to publications and proceedings at national level conferences.

Cindy X. Cai, M.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Wilmer Eye Institute and specializes in the medical and surgical management of retinal diseases. She obtained her M.D. from Columbia University and completed ophthalmology residency at the Wilmer Eye Institute before finishing a vitreoretinal surgery fellowship at the Duke Eye Center. Dr. Cai is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Applied Health Sciences Informatics. Her research lies at the intersection of ophthalmology, public health, and informatics and is aimed at developing novel strategies that incorporate social determinants of health for the prevention of vision loss from diabetic retinopathy.

Michael Cook is a Sr Programmer Analyst with the CCDA at Johns Hopkins University. In his role, he helps to provision clinical data to research teams. He has a background in Information Systems and statistics. He currently resides in Baltimore, MD.

Xiyu grew up in Jiangsu, China and graduated from Nanjing University, China with a B.S. in Biology. However, she was not totally satisfied with studying biological problems via pure experimental approaches. She then went to Harvard and completed a M.S. in Computational Biology, where she was able to systematically learn statistical and computational methods with their applications in health-related areas. During her master study, she witnessed the rapid growth of EHR system and how it brought burgeoning opportunities to biomedical research. At Johns Hopkins University, she wants to study and contribute to the technology that drives the development of EHRs system, or more broadly, the digitization of healthcare.

Chen Dun is a senior data analyst that has conducted interventional and epidemiologic studies in implementation science and clinical outcome research. She holds a MHS from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health concentrating on quantitative research methods and social epidemiology. Her project interests include clinical analytics, public health informatics, and design/deploy innovative interventions to promote healthcare systems. Chen aims to enhance health service delivery and access and improve patient quality and safety. She aspires to use advanced health IT to identify inappropriate medical practices and develop evidence-based, data-driven interventions to optimize provider practices and enhance patient experience. 

Andrea Fourquet is an Informatics consultant that has been working in the informatics standards field for over five years. Her main project interests have to do with integrating Emergency Medical Services and electronic health records for a more efficient and informed patient care.  Andrea is a board member for the National EMS Information Systems (NEMSIS) working to further reduce the gap between emergency patient records and healthcare records. She has participated in the development of CDC and international standards utilizing Fast Healthcare Information Request (FHIR) and CDA data structures. She has supported the updating and maintenance of the CDC funded HIMSS Immunization Integration Program test plan, and configuration using the NIST Test Case Authoring and Management Tool (TCAMT).  Andrea has supported interoperability demonstrations at the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase and Public Health Informatics Conference as well as supporting standards testing bodies with ONC certification testing.

Franky is a Senior Pharmacist at the Institute of Mental Health, Singapore. He is currently involved in managing the current and implementing the future hospital electronic medical record and pharmacy systems. He is interested in healthcare data analytics, pharmacy informatics education, and medication safety. Franky received his Bachelor of Pharmacy (Honours) from Monash University, Australia and Master of Social and Health Care (Digital Health) from Savonia University of Applied Sciences, Finland. He is board certified in geriatric pharmacy and credentialed as PMI Professional in Business Analysis.

Davera Gabriel, R.N. is a Senior Research Terminologist in the Division of Health Sciences Informatics at Johns Hopkins University. Davera has participated in data standards development, led national multi-site observational data harmonization efforts and implementation of data standards supporting clinical, translational and population health research for nearly 3 decades.  She currently serves as a member of the Health Level Seven Terminology Authority and Health Information Management System Society Interoperability & Health Information Exchange Committee, as well as an active participant in the American Medical Informatics Association.  As a Nurse-Informatician, Davera enjoys applying her standards implementation experience in multidisciplinary teams representing diverse clinical and technical backgrounds that achieve creative data solutions resulting in knowledge discovery and improvements in personal and population health.

M.S. in Health Sciences Informatics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Ting He is currently a research associate at Columbia University.

Ting He received her Bachelor’s degree in Bioinformatics from Dalian University of Technology, China, and was a visiting student at the University of Calgary, Canada. Her prior research work was in analyzing cancer genome data and frequent itemset mining. Having seen many old Chinese people without the medical background to understand their physical examination reports, she led a team to create an Android application to solve this problem during her sophomore year.

Her goal is to find the intersection between informatics, technology and healthcare, and to improve the unfair distribution of health resources. Her research interests lie in health system management, mHealth, and eHealth.

Stephanie hails from Baltimore by way of sweet tea (Nashville) and maple syrup (Cambridge, New Haven, and NYC). She currently works in Dr. Chute’s lab as a Sr. Healthcare Informatics Analyst, Biomedical Informatics and Data Science Section, Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Most recently, she has been deeply involved in data ingestion and harmonization effort for the National Covid19 Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Project. N3C is the largest COVID19 cohort repository to date with 19.2 billion rows of data, versioned data repository available for research. She also works in CRISP project where she built the data pipeline to harmonize the state of Maryland COVID registry data in to OMOP CDM. CRSIP is the State Designated Health Information Exchange (HIE) for Maryland. Previously, she curated EHR data to build research data warehouse repository for secondary use of clinical data at Vanderbilt University. She received BS in Electrical Engineering from MIT. She has been inducted into the Fellows of AMIA(FAMIA) this year.

Nauman is an international business leader with experience in Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and the USA. He has more than 17 years experience in various roles with increasing responsibility, such as P&L management, sales, marketing and operations. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Roper Industries, GE Oil & Gas, Cameron and Ingersoll Rand. He is founding member and current Chairman of the Board at Innovatel Telepsychiatry founded in 2014 with now over 30 psychiatrists practicing in over 9 states.  Nauman completed his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin in July 2010. He also holds Bachelor Engineering degree in Chemical Engineering from McMaster University in 1997.

Joshua Jorvina is an RN transplant from the Philippines. He finished his BSN from Far Eastern University with honors (Cum Laude).  He currently works as a Chemo Infusion RN at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC and plans to transfer to their nursing informatics or health informatics department in the future. 

Dr. Robert Kirchoff is physician and researcher at Mayo Clinic, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine. He holds board certifications in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine. Dr. Kirchoff’s research focus is on inpatient management of withdrawal in medically complex patients. 

Carly is a vascular sonographer from Austin, TX and the second in her household to attend JHU for an advanced degree. Carly put herself through ultrasound school as a single mom and was thrilled to obtain an Associate’s degree to begin working. However, Carly knew she wasn’t done with her education and decided to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in diagnostic imaging. It was during this time that she discovered the fascinating field of informatics and data science’s expanding role in healthcare technology. She is motivated by the shortcomings in current PACs systems and the opportunity to be a part of the solutions proposed by imaging informaticians. Carly hopes to use the knowledge gained at JHU to be a contribution to the sonographic field and to the medical community as a whole.

Named after the Lone Star State, Star Liu grew up in Shanghai, China. Star graduated from Emory University with a B.S. in Quantitative Sciences (concentration in Biology). He has been very interested in the healthcare and public health informatics sphere and believes this niche is up for big changes and innovations. Thus, Star wanted to equip himself with all the necessary skillset to succeed. In his free time, he enjoys working out, playing basketball, hiking, and cooking among many other things. Finally, he is the biggest fan of Chipotle.

Junjie Luo began the BIDS Ph.D. program at the School of Medicine in Fall 2022. Before this, he was an Information System Ph.D. student in Rh.Smith Business School of UMD from 2020. Junjie received M.S. in Data Science and B.B.A. in Applied Economics from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. His primary research interests include healthcare, artificial intelligence, and behavioral economics, especially the interaction between human decisions (from both providers and patients) and AI adoption in healthcare contexts.

Jessica is a Senior Health Informatics Analyst in the Dept. of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School & Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute in Boston, MA. She provides informatics and software development leadership and expertise to support socio-technical platforms used in large-scale research and public health surveillance initiatives. Prior experience includes working as a surveillance epidemiologist at the MA Dept. of Public Health and implementing Electronic Health Records-based tools to help radiologists meet quality measures. She focuses on using public health experience to interpret and apply data, standards, & technologies to projects. Jessica holds an MPH from the Boston University School of Public Health and Certificate in Clinical Informatics from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Siddhi Mathur is an Obstetrician/Gynecologist and Canadian Surgical Fellow in Advanced Pelvic Surgery at Mount Sinai hospital in Toronto. Siddhi is a student in the Online Applied Health Science Informatics program.  Siddhi's interests and previous work include research into surgical outcomes, curriculum development, surgical coaching, resident teaching and building research capacity.  

Kanthi Narra is a geriatric physician in Middle Tennessee in the Nashville area. Kanthi is passionate about clinical quality and data analytics; and enjoys spending time with family, reading books and walking on trails.

Clara Ngoh graduated Edinburgh University, UK, with a Bachelor in Medicine and Surgery, before going on to receive her Masters in Medicine from the National University Singapore. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians UK, and a fellow of the Academy Medicine Singapore, as a specialist in Renal Medicine. It is her belief that healthcare informatics and big data in the realm of precision preventative medicine, is what ultimately will save many lives in Singapore and globally from developing and suffering devastating effects of kidney failure. In spare time, she enjoys baking, and is an accomplished pianist.

Monica Ngov is a Virginia native (Go Hoos!), Brooklyn-based, Product Manager with over eight years of experience in user-centered product design. Currently, she works on the personal planning software for financial advisors, but she draws inspiration from all industries. It is her belief that cross-pollination is one of the most original paths to innovation. In the future, she aspires to create intuitive, thoughtful, data-driven applications for experienced, subject matter experts in the healthcare and healthtech industry, using the skills and frameworks from the product and design world. She is also interested in the effect of technologies, such as machine learning and blockchain, and increased data interoperability on provider and patient journeys.

Alfred Ouyang is a cybersecurity professional with extensive experience in advising and assisting federal government agencies on the acquisition of health information technology (HIT) systems for their complex healthcare delivery ecosystems. He is a continuous learner. Alfred has received graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering and University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. He is a Certified Professional in Health Information & Management Systems (CPHIMS), a Health Care Information Security & Privacy Practitioner (HCISPP), and a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

Jen Wooyeon Park has professional experience in healthcare data science, having worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and at Blink Health, a cloud pharmacy startup company. She managed various types of data such as claims, prescriptions, pharmacy operation software logs, lab results to solve problems in quality and safety, operation efficiency, data quality, and medication adherence. She is also interested in improving data standardization and cost efficiency through better system designs and data science methods.

Jennifer Peet is Head of Health Informatics at Avellino Labs, a global genetics and precision medicine company. Prior to Avellino, she worked for UC Irvine Health for over eight years where she designed and managed destination medicine patient programs. Jennifer holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh, and recently completed the MS in Population Health Management from Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her professional career also includes 10 years working in the legal field and lecturing in higher education. Jennifer has lived and worked in Brazil and the UK.

Kanimozhi Raja's firm belief is healthcare innovations are to enhance the quality of everyone’s life. As a healthcare futurist, her vision is to develop or be part of a team that develops next-generation healthcare technologies, devices, and gadgets to change healthcare delivery and disrupt the industry. She is incredibly passionate about research in the areas of data-driven smart care. Her primary focus is to create Precise Data-Driven Digital Care (P3DC) protocols and build a P3DC delivery Platform that can take life-saving healthcare technologies beyond socio-economic and geographical barriers.  Her primary objective at Johns Hopkins is to embark on extensive research by teaming up with eminent medical futurists and improve evidence-based practice. During her previous job at HCI Corp, she was part of the team that developed Telth, a next generation blockchain Technology called Embedded Logistics Tunnel for Health care, a private permissioned hybrid blockchain built by utilizing root cloud architecture. Telth ecosystem can use P3DC Protocols for Digital Health Care delivery.  A Unique care protocol for precise data-driven care (P3DC) uses TWBAN technology for Remote Patient monitoring/management. Raja's research focus is developing, testing, and commercializing P3DC protocols, further building versatile WBAN gadgets, especially biochip and bio-chip hubs for RPM.  She wishes to be part of a social movement that builds a healthy society that chases the ailments before it comes, not to chase treatment. Enhance the quality of life through person-centric affordable primary and preventive care through seamless monitoring with greater affordability through technology-driven superior Smart care. Her other areas of interest are AI in Healthcare and big data. At Johns Hopkins, Raja is hoping to gain exposure to the next-generation disruptive technologies in healthcare.

Molly Redman is a first year graduate student pursuing a master’s in the Applied Health Sciences Informatics program. She grew up in a small town located in Northern Arizona and graduated from Arizona State University with honors in May 2021. Her degree was in biomedical informatics, with a minor in mathematics. Her undergraduate thesis project surrounded evaluating contraceptive decision support systems for young women. Overall, her academic interests include data analytics and visualization, health management, and public health. In her free time, she enjoys spending quality time with her friends and family, photography, and going out on hikes!

Jeetika Sainani grew up in Northern Virginia and received her Bachelor’s degree in Bioinformatics from Virginia Commonwealth University in December 2019. She is currently a Data Manager for a Clinical Research Organization called Emmes, where she is responsible for overseeing clinical data and maintaining databases for multiple vaccine trials. Her goal is to use data science and analytics to better implement healthcare solutions and improve patient care. She believes that the Master of Science in Applied Health Sciences Informatics program will further enhance her technical skills and lead her to accomplish that goal in the future. During her spare time, Jeetika enjoys working out, watching Hockey and Football games, and spending time with her loved ones.  

Gabriel Salvador, MD is an academic physician and radiologist from Brazil and currently works at the Brazilian Red Cross- Parana Chapter. Gabriel's main interests include medical education, dissemination of good practices worldwide, and digital inclusion in healthcare in low income regions. Gabriel made several contributions in different medical fields and is currently working in developing AI algorithms to help diagnose diseases in order to improve healthcare in critical regions. 

Pete has over 11 years’ experience as an attending Emergency Department physician.  He completed his residency in Emergency Medicine with Drexel University College of Medicine where he previously earned his medical degree.   He finished college at Emory University with a BS in biology and a minor in Mathematics.  He is married with 2 children and lives near the C and D Canal in Maryland.

Logan Smith is a data analyst for the Virginia Department of Health (VDH), and works with hospital and reference laboratories to set up transmission of electronic lab reports (ELR) to Virginia’s electronic disease surveillance system. She has been an ASCP certified Medical Technologist since 1989, and has 17 years of laboratory experience, including bacteriology, chemistry, serology and hematology. She earned a Master of Public Health degree in 2015 from Walden University. She completed her capstone project with VDH, which led to her current position and her interest in informatics. Logan has four grown children and five grandchildren. She and her retired husband share their home with two greyhounds, Sadie and Moe.

Shanshan Song received her bachelor level education in chemistry and German from Zhejiang University and National Tsing Hua University, and pursued a career in health informatics during her master’s study in chemistry/biostatistics/public health at Boston University and Columbia University. Her long-time goal is making a clear and friendly health information environment a possibility for the public, and harmonizing the medical confidentiality and interoperability for better healthcare service.  During her spare time, she actively supports advancement of science, and is enthusiastic about (both natural and artificial) language learning. 

Joel Sursas is a Medical Doctor with an interest in Health Informatics. As the Head of Clinical Affairs at Biorithm - a Singaporean start-up, he works with engineers to revolutionize obstetric care through telemonitoring. He oversees Clinical IT requirements as well as plans and governs clinical trials which are underway in Singapore, Australia and the United Kingdom. He also designs and tests the fidelity of the medical mobile/web applications around our device. Finally, he plans the implementation strategy within hospitals’ local infrastructure and ensures that the hospitals achieve compliance with international and local regulatory standards which govern data protection and protected health information.

Emir Amaro lives in Serang, Indonesia. For the last 2 years, Emir has worked as an emergency physician at RSUD Banten. He also manages his clinic in Serang. Previously,  he attended medical school at Universitas Sriwijaya. Emir is interested in data interoperability, clinical informatics, and AI applicability in cardiology. Outside work, Emir enjoys playing music, creating videos, playing games, and reading books.

Joan Thul has extensive experience since joining the pharmaceutical industry over 15 years ago working with clinical database design, study data analysis and real-world evidence research. Her SAS programming skills have also been applied to real-world data sources such as claims data and electronic health records. She is currently working on CDISC SDTM and ADaM programming for a regulatory submission and has a key role in clinical development and life cycle management programs across multiple therapeutic areas. She is interested in becoming stronger with data analysis in a science-based approach to understanding populations consisting of complex health factors and outcomes, to prevent disease, save and improve lives. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Rutgers University.

Zack is excited to join the Applied Health Informatics program. He recently graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.S in Computer Science, and has been tangentially involved with the healthcare sphere for a number of years. Zack's interest was peaked when he worked at the UChicago hospital, and saw how challenging management and daily interactions with EHR were from a first-hand perspective. IHe definitely leaned closer towards the programmatic/data science side of health informatics, especially with his background. Zack is interested in getting more holistic experience and hopes to eventually contribute as a data scientist and developer to lessen the burden EHR poses in healthcare. In his free time he enjoys drawing, playing video/board games, and listening to music.

Ching-Huan received both a bachelor’s degree and master’s in pharmacy from Taipei Medical University, Taiwan. He has worked as a drug safety associate at Taiwan’s National Adverse Drug Reporting Center, where he developed his research interest in pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacovigilance. Most recently, he has gained research experience at Taipei Medical University, engaging in research projects on drug safety and repurposing issues, electronic health records and their extensive application to clinical decision supporting systems. 

Shixiong Wei is an incoming graduate student in the Health Informatics Research Program. He grew up in Lanzhou, locate in the midwest of China, Gansu province. Shixiong graduated from UC Davis in 2022 and majored in Bioinformatics in college. He has lab experience and is familiar with Python and R language. He wants to learn more informatics skills in the master's program, He believes that informatics can lead the future. Outside of work he works out in the gym, plays basketball, and travels in his free time. In the future, Shixiong wants to attend a Ph.D. program in the Bioinformatics field.

Shijia Zhang is currently a Health Science Informatics Ph.D. student at the Department of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science, Johns Hopkins Medicine. He graduated with a B.S in Health Information Management from the University of Pittsburgh and an MS in Biomedical Informatics from Harvard Medical School. He has a strong interest in the application of artificial intelligence to Electronic Health Records(EHR) to develop precision medicine methods and clinical decision support systems. Before joining the Ph.D. program he worked at Mass general Brigham developing case identification algorithms and conducting statistical inferences in clinical research. In his spare time, he likes playing sports and music.