NEXUS INFORMATICS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Research Data Concierge / University of Kansas Medical Center
Anjanette Williams is a Research Data Concierge at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She is the chief communicator and the single point of contact for researchers in need of informatics resources. She received her Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Information Systems from Keller Graduate School of Management, a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Missouri Kansas City and is a Certified Professional Medical Coder. Previously she worked as Data Analyst at Children's Mercy Hospital where she designed multiple reports for researchers which required extensive data analytics involving data extractions, data cleansing, transformations, and data visualizations. Her Experience includes teaching as a Medical Assistant and Billing & Coding Instructor. Additionally, she plays an important role in collaborating with Research Administration and has designed multiple websites for resources and uses artificial intelligence for communications. She is passionate about helping others, seeking knowledge and teaching.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences / University of Missouri
Carissa L. Philippi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Iowa where she conducted research examining the effects of brain injury on self-perception. After finishing graduate school, Prof. Philippi conducted neuroimaging research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to investigate the brain networks underlying psychopathic traits in prison inmates. Her current research seeks to understand the neural mechanisms of maladaptive self-perception in neuropsychiatric conditions, such as depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Associate / Stowers Institute for Medical Research
Charles McAnany holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia, where he specialized in molecular dynamics simulations of biomolecular assemblies and intrinsically disordered proteins. Since 2019, he has been working with Dr. Julia Zeitlinger at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research to apply machine learning techniques to genomic data in order to understand the sequence rules underlying gene regulation. His research touches on developmental signaling, structural biophysics, high-performance computing, cellular adhesion, ribonucleoprotein assembly evolution, and automated bias removal in experimental data. In his free time, he is an avid photographer, with a full darkroom in his basement capable of processing and printing negatives from his 4×5 camera.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor, Division of Medical Informatics / Department of Internal Medicine / University of Kansas Medical Center
Dr. Diego Mazzotti is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Medical Informatics, Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. Mazzotti received his Ph.D. in Psychobiology at the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil and a Certificate in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Mazzotti is the Vice-Chair of the Sleep Research Network, a task force of the Sleep Research Society focused on developing strategies to enable network capacity for clinical sleep medicine research. Dr. Mazzotti co-leads the Sleep Clinical Domain Team of the National COVID Cohort Collaborative and investigates real-world sleep data ingestion approaches for large-scale observational studies in COVID-19 patients.
Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Principal Scientist
- Principal Scientist and Group Leader for the Applied Biology & Bioinformatics
Dr. Joseph A. Russell is a Principal Scientist and Group Leader for the Applied Biology & Bioinformatics capability area within MRIGlobal's Life Sciences Resource Center. His team is focused on the development of novel computational approaches, platform systems, and workflow improvement for applied microbial ecology, biosurveillance, microbial forensics, genomic epidemiology, and public health. Some examples of this work involve streamlined metagenomics and interpretive bio-analytics for environmental and clinical contexts, genotype-to-phenotype predictive modeling, single-person portable/automated/ruggedized molecular biosurveillance platforms, host-pathogen interactions, arbovirus ecology, and applied synthetic biology. Dr. Russell received his Ph.D. in geomicrobiology from the University of Delaware in 2015, studying the microbial ecology of deep subseafloor sediment and oceanic crust samples. He joined MRIGlobal later that year as a post-doctoral research associate and has worked in the above contexts on various U.S. government programs with DTRA, DoD, NASA, CDC, DARPA, and others.
Dr. Sachin Pawaskar is a researcher, educator, developer and open source enthusiast. He currently holds a Professor of Practice position in the Department of Information Systems & Quantitative Analysis at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He has a Ph.D. in Information Technology, an MBA, and a MS in Computer Science from University of Nebraska at Omaha. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Bombay University.
Prior to joining UNO, he had 25+ years industry experience with a successful record of accomplishments in the Telecommunications, Energy, Transportation, Healthcare and Insurance industries with extensive experience in new product development, architecture & frameworks, quality assurance, software security analysis & risk mitigation and audit compliance in a fast-paced environment. His career work spans both technical and management tracks all the way from programmer to Chief Technology Officer. His research interests include Sustainability, Energy Awareness, Big Data Analytics, Data Visualization, Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud Computing and his latest passion Forensic Anthropology.
Dr. Pawaskar has a passion for Service Learning and Community Engagement projects. He enjoys teaching, especially young kids with malleable minds. His hobbies include Philately (collecting stamps). He strongly believes in girls education, empowerment & equality and supports the "Nanhi Kali" (Little flower buds) foundation which promotes girls education in rural India.
Job Titles:
- Chairman and Professor
- Professor
Dr. Ye Wang is Professor and the Chair of the Department of Communication and Journalism. Her publications focus on interactivity and engagement on websites and social media. She has published in leading journals like Journal of Business Research, Journal of Health Communication, Journal of Product & Brand Management, Health Education & Behavior, etc.. Dr. Wang has been collaborating with data scientists on human-AI approach to extracting consumer insights from unstructured text data such as social media content, using computational methods. She was awarded the Research Fellowship of the American Academy of Advertising twice (2017 and 2020). She is a co-PI of NSF's Open Collaborative Experiential Learning (OCEL.AI) project. Dr. Wang is also an affiliate faculty member with UMKC's Center for Digital and Public Humanities, the School of Science and Engineering
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science / Kansas State University
Eugene Vasserman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Kansas State University, specializing in the security of distributed systems. He is also the director of the Kansas State University Center for Cybersecurity and Trustworthy Systems and runs the Cybersecurity degree program. He received a B.S. in Biochemistry and Neuroscience with a Computer Science minor from the University of Minnesota in 2003. His M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science are also from the University of Minnesota, in 2008 and 2010, respectively. His current research is chiefly in the area of privacy, anonymity, censorship resistance, and socio-technical aspects of security. His research has resulted in over 45 peer reviewed publications in computer science, psychology, and education, with work spanning the gamut from medical cyber-physical systems, authorization with integrated break-glass capabilities, security vulnerabilities emergent from the BGP infrastructure of the internet, blockchains, energy depletion attacks in low-power systems, secure hyper-local social networking, and privacy and censorship resistance on a global scale (systems capable of supporting up to a hundred billion users). He has collaborated with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on medical device cybersecurity and contributed to FDA policies on building safety-focused cybersecurity into legacy and future medical devices and systems-of-systems.In 2013, he received the NSF CAREER award for work on secure next-generation medical systems. He contributed to the UL 2900 standardization process for cybersecurity of network-connectable devices, the AAMI interoperability working group, and the ANSI / AAMI / UL 2800 standards effort for medical device interoperability. He has served on numerous program committees including USENIX Security, ACSAC, PETS/PoPETs, USEC, ASIACCS, HotWiSec, WPES, and SecureComm.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science / Kansas State University
Hande Küçük McGinty received her bachelor's degree in computer engineering at Bilkent University in 2007 and her master's degree in computer science at Eastern Michigan University in 2010. She worked as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, before she finished her doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. She worked with the USDA at Ohio University before joining the computer science department at K-State in 2022. McGinty has a long history of working with interdisciplinary teams. Her most recent research focuses on food, agriculture and bio-ontologies and their applications for artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Child Health
Dr. Shirwan is Professor of Child Health and Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine and a NextGen Precision Health faculty member, University of Missouri-Columbia, MO. He obtained his PhD from the University of California in Santa Barbara, CA, and performed postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. Before relocating to the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2020, Dr. Shirwan served on the Faculty of various academic institutions in the United States, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, Alleghany University of Health Science, Philadelphia, PA, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY. Dr. Shirwan pioneered the concept of transient and positional display of immunological ligands on the surface of cells and tissues as a safe, practical, and effective alternative to gene therapy for localized immunomodulation with applications to transplantation, autoimmunity, and cancer immunoprevention and immunotherapy. Dr. Shirwan is an inventor with 25 issued patents, founder/co-founder of 3 biotech startups, widely published, and organized and lectured at numerous national/international conferences. He has continuously been funded by federal and non-federal funding agencies and serves on the editorial board of various scientific journals.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Assistant Professor, College of Biosciences / Kansas City University
Dr. Shaffer is an Assistant Professor in the College of Biosciences at Kansas City University (KCU). He earned his PhD in Neurobiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his post-doctoral training in the Magnetic Resonance Research Facility at the University of Iowa. Dr. Shaffer's research focuses on functional neuroimaging in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia. In particular, Dr. Shaffer is interested in the use of machine learning techniques for integrating multi-modal imaging data. At KCU, Dr. Shaffer teaches computer programming and bioinformatics algorithms and is working to launch a new training program in bioinformatics.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Advisory Board
- CEO of Orbis Biosciences
Leveraging experience as an entrepreneur, executive, engineer, investor, and coach, Maria works with select emerging and high-growth leaders, companies, investors, and entrepreneurial support organizations, helping them make opportunities happen.
As CEO of Orbis Biosciences, Maria built a technology company that improved pharmaceutical manufacturing, won awards for its novel innovation, and was acquired by Adare Pharmaceuticals. As Managing Director of Techstars Kansas City, Maria invested in and coached companies across health tech, biotech, fintech, deep tech, and consumer tech. She has worked with founders from over 30 companies as a business growth guide.
Maria was a Director at Cerner Corporation, where she held P&L responsibility for a life sciences business unit that provided drug safety software and services to pharmaceutical companies. She also created a new enterprise within Cerner for state and regional healthcare software.
Maria was named one of Entrepreneur Magazine's Entrepreneurial Women to Watch and received the Pipeline Entrepreneurs' Inspiration Award and Central Exchange's STEMMy Enterprising Innovator Award. Maria serves on the Board of Directors of BioNexus KC and earned degrees from the University of Chicago, Stanford University, and Kansas State University.
Mirza is currently an NIH T32 Fellow in Cardiovascular Outcomes Research at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Economics from Northwestern University and his medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin. Following internal medicine residency training at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, he completed the VA Medical Informatics and Quality Improvement Fellowship based in Nashville while also pursuing a master's degree in Vanderbilt's Department of Biomedical Informatics. Mirza is interested in the application of informatics and data science methods for disease detection, risk stratification, and improved allocation of health care. He has a particular focus on cardio informatics, imaging informatics, and natural language processing.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant Professor in the University of Missouri
Stacy L. Farr, PhD, MPH, is a Research Assistant Professor in the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, Department of Biomedical & Health Informatics and Director of Outcomes Research at Saint Luke's Health System. As a trained health services researcher in health policy and public health, she brings over ten years of experience managing research and policy projects and conducting mixed methods program evaluations on a variety of health-related topics. Dr. Farr completed her BS from Nebraska Wesleyan University; MPH from the University of Kansas School of Medicine; and PhD from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Health Services Research & Policy.
Dr. Farr has presented and published in a variety of national venues, including the peer-reviewed journals Medical Care and the Journal of Clinical Oncology. She also participates on various local and national advisory boards focused on bringing an evidence-based perspective in health services research, health policy, and public health.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Associate Professor / Department of Computer Science
Tae-Hyuk (Ted) Ahn, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Saint Louis University (SLU). He is also a core faculty member in the graduate program of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. His research interests include bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, high-performance computing, big data analytics, and machine & deep learning. Before joining SLU in 2015, he worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher. He received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech in 2012, the M.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northwestern University in 2007, and the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Yonsei University in 2000. From 2000 to 2004, he worked in the industry at Samsung SDS in South Korea.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor in Department of Biostatistics & Data Science at University of Kansas Medical Center
- Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics & Data Science / University of Kansas Medical Center / Associate Member
Zhiguo Zhou is an Assistant Professor in Department of Biostatistics & Data Science at University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) and Associate Member at University of Kansas Cancer Center (KUCC). He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees at Xidian University (Xi'an, China) in 2008 and 2014, respectively. He was a visiting scholar at Leiden University (Leiden, the Netherlands) from May 2013 to May 2014. Since December 2014, he worked as Postdoctoral fellow at Department of Radiation Oncology, UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX). Then he was promoted as Research Instructor in September 2017. Before moving to KUMC in May 2022, he worked as an Assistant Professor in School of Computer Science and Mathematics at University of Central Missouri (Warrensburg, MO) starting from August 2019. He has published more than 80 journal or conference papers. He is the editor board member of 2 journals and guest associate editor of Medical Physics. He was the reviewer of more than 20 journals and session chair in multiple conferences. His research interests include radiomics, treatment outcome prediction, medical image processing, reliable artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning, knowledge representation and reasoning