Meet the Clinical Data Core
We are first and foremost a team of biomedical informatics specialists. We pair clinical understanding with modern data engineering so that researchers get datasets they can trust — and a partner who understands the question behind the request.
Jiajie Zhang, PhD
Dean, Professor, and The Glassell Family Foundation Distinguished Chair in Informatics Excellence at the McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics. A 2023 AAAS Fellow with more than 30 years in biomedical informatics, cognitive science, and medical AI, he provides executive leadership and vision for the Clinical Data Core.
Robert Murphy, MD
Associate Dean for Applied Informatics and Associate Professor, and Coordinating Center Director of the UT Health Intelligence Platform (UT-HIP). Former Chief Medical Informatics Officer at Memorial Hermann, he brings deep clinical-systems and governance experience to the Core's research partnerships.
Holly Efting
As Executive Director of the Clinical Data Core at the McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics, Holly Efting directs the Core's clinical data infrastructure and applied AI engineering. She brings more than two decades of Oracle Health (Cerner) expertise architecting enterprise solutions against live clinical systems. In strategic partnership with Dr. Xiaoqian Jiang — creator of the CareFlow platform and the Core's Technical Architecture Advisor — she leads the engineering and clinical-data strategy behind CareFlow, the Core's retrieval engine that transforms research protocols into reproducible, IRB-governed patient cohorts.
Xiaoqian Jiang, PhD
Creator of the CareFlow platform and Technical Architecture Advisor to the Clinical Data Core, Dr. Jiang is Associate Vice President for Medical AI, Chair of the Department of Health Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, and the Christopher Sarofim Professor at UTHealth Houston, and directs the Center for Secure Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare (SAFE). A leading expert in privacy-preserving data mining, federated learning, and explainable machine learning, he holds over $35 million in NIH and other grant funding. His secure-AI expertise anchors CareFlow's design, the Core's retrieval engine that turns research protocols into reproducible, IRB-governed patient cohorts.
Rene Plascencia
Rene joined the UTHealth Houston McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics in 2025 and has been focused on managing an agentic AI-based infrastructure for Clinical Data Core. His efforts include supporting healthcare data delivery and collaborating with Principal Investigators and other key stakeholders. He has a key interest in a more AI-based future with more efficient workflows.
Luyao Chen
Luyao Chen is a Data Scientist with expertise in databases, AI-enabled research, knowledge management, and clinical data collection to support research and EHR business initiatives. He contributes to building foundational knowledge and data capabilities for the early development of the Clinical Data Core project.
Mario Laiseca-Ruiz
Mario has industry experience in software development and a background in data analytics. He joined UTHealth Houston in 2024, where he specializes in building AI-powered healthcare applications and improving healthcare data workflows.
Yuning Xie
AI/ML Programmer in the Clinical Data Core at UTHealth, focused on developing AI agent-based solutions to streamline healthcare data query workflows and support clinical research data requests.
Want to Work With Us?
If you have a clinical research question, we would like to hear it. Contact the Clinical Data Core or learn more about our process and services.