AMIA Doctoral Dissertation Award

AMIA recognizes the critical importance of fostering the development and discovery of new informatics science as well as the recognition and support of AMIA members who will grow the field and become the next generation of informatics leaders. This talent is nurtured in graduate and doctoral research programs.

Special thanks to the charter donors of the award.

The AMIA Doctoral Dissertation Award offers high-value and prestigious recognition for the top doctoral dissertation each year that contributes to the science of informatics in any biomedical application domain or domains. In 2016 JAMIA published some suggested guidelines for the preparation of high-quality dissertations in biomedical informatics.

Read the suggested guidelines

Award Prizes

Each of the two winners receives:

• Cash award ($7500 for first prize, $2500 for honorable mention)
• Presentation on award-winning research at AMIA Annual Symposium
• Formal award presentation at the AMIA Annual Symposium
• AMIA Annual Symposium registration waived
• Travel and accommodation stipend
• Publicity

Past Winners

2021

• Denis Newman-Griffis, PhD, The Ohio State University [First Prize]
  Dissertation: Capturing Domain Semantics with Representation Learning: Applications to Health and Function
• Amelia Averitt, MPH, MA, PhD, Columbia University [Honorable Mention]
  Dissertation: Machine Learning Methods for Causal Inference with Observational Biomedical Data
   
• Muhammad Amith, MS, PhD, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Design and Architecture of an Ontology-driven Dialogue System for HPV Vaccine Counseling
• Kevin Lybarger, PhD, University of Washington [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Extracting Information from Clinical Text with Limited Annotated Data
• Sarah Mullin, PhD, MS, University at Buffalo [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Sending AI Algorithms to Medical School: Transfer Learning in Medicine Towards Enhanced Model Performance and Bias Reduction
• Hiral Soni, PhD, Arizona State University [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Informatics Approaches to Understand Data Sensitivity Perspectives of Patients with Behavioral Health Conditions

2020

• Maulik Kamdar, Stanford University [First Prize]
  Dissertation: ‘ A Web-Based Integration Framework Over Heterogeneous Biomedical Data and Knowledge Sources ’
• Sharon Davis, Vanderbilt University [Honorable Mention]
  Dissertation: ‘ Stabilizing Calibration of Clinical Prediction Models in Non-Stationary Environments: Methods Supporting Data-Driven Model Updating’
   
• Yingxiang Huang, University of California San Diego [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Preservation of Patient Level Privacy: Federated Classification and Calibration Models
• Pengtao Xie, Carnegie Mellon University [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Diversity-promoting and Large-scale Machine Learning for Healthcare 
• Zexian Zeng, Northwestern University [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Mutational Processes Modeling and Early Cancer Diagnosis

2019

• Travis Goodwin, University of Texas at Dallas [First Prize]
  Dissertation: ‘ Medical Question Answering and Patient Cohort Retrieval’
• Jessica (Jette) Lowell Henderson, University of Texas at Austin [Honorable Mention]
  Dissertation: ‘ Learning and Validating Clinically Meaningful Phenotypes from Electronic Health Data’
   
• Zhaobin Kuang, University of Wisconsin, Madison [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Towards Learning with High Causal Fidelity from Longitudinal Event Data
• Lina Sulieman, Vanderbilt University [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Learning Clinical Data Representations for Machine Learning
• Ye Ye, University of Pittsburgh [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Transfer Learning for Bayesian Case Detection Systems

2018

• Bethany Percha, Stanford University [First Prize]
  Dissertation: ' Biomedical Text Mining From Context'
• Yonatan Halpern, New York University [Honorable Mention]
  Dissertation: ' Semi-Supervised Learning for Electronic Phenotyping in Support of Precision Medicine'
   
• Brett Beaulieu-Jones, University of Pennsylvania [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Machine Learning Methods to Identify Hidden Phenotypes in the Electronic Health Record
• Marzyeh Ghassemi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Representation Learning in Multi-Dimensional Clinical Timeseries for Risk and Event Prediction
• Wei Wei, University of California San Diego [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Information Retrieval in Biomedical Research: From Articles to Datasets
• Weiyi Xia, Vanderbilt University [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Optimizing the Privacy Risk - Utility Framework in Data Publication

2017

• Rimma Perotte (Pivovarov), Columbia University [First Prize]
  Dissertation: 'Electronic Health Record Summarization over Heterogeneous and Irregularly Sampled Clinical Data'
• Yuan Luo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Honorable Mention]
  Dissertation: 'Towards Unified Biomedical Modeling with Subgraph Mining and Factorization Algorithms'
   
• Genna R. Cohen, University of Michigan [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Physician Practice Variation in Electronic Health Record Documentation
• Steven G. Johnson, University of Minnesota [Finalist]
  Dissertation: A Data Quality Framework for the Secondary Use of Electronic Health Information
• Azadeh Nikfarjam, Arizona State University [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Health Information Extraction from Social Media
• Kun-Hsing Yu, Stanford University [Finalist]
  Dissertation: Integrating Omics and Histopathology Profiles for Precision Medicine

Charter Donors

These individuals and groups doubled the impact of their donations as Charter Donor to the AMIA Doctoral Dissertation Award. Thank you!

Funding for the Award

An endowment fund was created to support the Doctoral Dissertation Award in perpetuity.  AMIA is grateful to the Charter Donors who offered support for the fund in its formative period (between the AMIA Symposium in 2015 and March 2017).  The Campaign was chaired by Dr. Ted Shortliffe (who also offered a 1:1 match for all donations up to $100,000). In order to ensure that the annual awards will be fully funded, regardless of vagaries in annual returns on the Award’s endowment, individuals who are interested in giving additional funds to the award can contact the AMIA staff.

Dissertation Award Selection Committee

The 2022 judging committee includes:

• Chunhua Weng (Chair), PhD, FACMI, Columbia University
• Riccardo Bellazzi, PhD, FACMI, University of Pavia, Italy
• Gregory Cooper, MD, PhD, FACMI, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
• John H. Holmes (Chair), PhD, FACMI, University of Pennsylvania
• Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, FACMI, University of California San Diego
• C. David Page, PhD, FACMI, Duke University
• Li Zhou, MD, PhD, FACMI, FAMIA, Harvard Medical School
• Tanya Tolpegin (ex officio), AMIA CEO
• Jeff Williamson (ex officio), AMIA Vice President, Academic Affairs and Education