Formerly the 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.
Previous Winners
2022
First Prize
- Zongwei Zhou, PhD, Arizona State University
Dissertation: Towards Annotation-Efficient Deep Learning for Computer-Aided Diagnosis
Defense | Slides
Honorable Mention
- Elliot Mitchell, PhD, Columbia University
Dissertation: Enabling Automated, Conversational Health Coaching with Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Finalists
- Tiffany Callahan, PhD, MPH, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Dissertation: Learning Deep Translational Patient Representations: Systematic Integration of Clinical Records and Biomedical Knowledge - Aaron Coyner, PhD, Oregon Health & Sciences University
Dissertation: Machine Learning for Disease Detection and Prediction in Retinopathy of Prematurity - Yanrong (Jerry) Ji, PhD, Northwestern University
Dissertation: Development of Informatics Methods for Analysis of Complex Gene Regulation and Transcriptome Diversity Data in Cancer - Matthew Lenert, PhD, Vanderbilt University
Dissertation: The Deep Aion Project: Exploring How Different Temporal Representations Can Benefit Deep Longitudinal Models
Dissertation Award Selection Committee
The 2023 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, PhD, FACMI, University of Pennsylvania
- Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, FACMI, University of California San Diego
- David Page, PhD, FACMI, Duke University
- Tanya Tolpegin, MBA (ex officio), AMIA CEO
- Li Zhou, MD, PhD, FACMI, FAMIA, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Partners Healthcare System
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.
Charter Donors
These individuals and groups doubled the impact of their donations as Charter Donor to the AMIA Doctoral Dissertation Award. Thank you!
- Jos Aarts
- Amit Acharya
- Russ B. Altman
- Jessica S. Ancker
- Gregory Ator
- Charles E. Barr
- Suzanne Bakken
- Andrew E. Balas
- David W. Bates
- Martha Dewey Bergren
- Olivier Bodenreider
- Aziz A. Boxwala
- Patricia Flatley Brennan
- Tiffani J. Bright
- Wendy Chapman
- R. Martin Chavez
- Michael F. Chiang
- Homer Chin
- Christopher G. Chute & Jeanne Nevin
- James J. Cimino
- Gregory F. Cooper
- Ronald Cornet
- Patricia C. Dykes
- Peter J. Embi
- David A. Evans
- Lawrence Fagan
- Dina Demner-Fushman
- Bruce H. Forman
- Carol Friedman
- Charles P. Friedman
- Reed M. Gardner
- Robert A. Greenes
- Paul Harris
- David Heckerman
- William and Sally Hersh
- John Holmes
- Eric J. Horvitz
- Betsy Humphreys
- Sarah Ingersoll
- Kevin B. Johnson
- David R. Kaufman
- Gilad J. Kuperman
- Curtis P. Langlotz
- Christoph U. Lehmann
- Nancy M. Lorenzi
- Kenneth D. Mandl
- Robert C. McClure
- Alexa T. McCray
- Brian P. McCune, in memory of Darlene P. Vian
- Genevieve B. Melton-Meaux
- Blackford Middleton
- Mark A. Musen
- Omolola I. Ogunyemi
- Philip and Tara Payne
- Thomas H. Payne
- Thomas & Judith Piemme
- Alex Poon
- Wanda M. Pratt
- Gretchen Purcell Jackson
- Maxine L. Rockoff
- Neil Sarkar and Liz Chen
- Titus K. Schleyer
- Dean F. Sittig
- Warner V. Slack
- Stuart M. Speedie
- William W. Stead
- Peter Szolovits
- Peter Tarczy-Hornoch
- William M. Tierney
- John Traxler
- Robert Wachter
- Dongwen Wang
- Stuart T. Weinberg
- Chunhua Weng
- Adam Wright
- William A. Yasnoff
- Michael H. Zarukian
- AMIA's Industry Advisory Council
- HL7
- Microsoft