Our school will honor our 2024 PhD, DHI, and MS graduates during the annual Commencement Ceremony at 4:00 PM (CT) on May 7. We invite the entire McWilliams School Community to attend this celebration so please visit https://sbmi.uth.edu/graduation/ for more information.

The ceremony will take place at the Shepherd School of Music – Alice Pratt Brown Hall in the Stude Concert Hall at Rice University (6100 Main Street Houston, TX 77005). Distinguished Professor and Inaugural Director of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco and Chief Data Scientist for the University of California Health System, Atul Butte, MD, PhD, will give the Commencement Address. After the ceremony concludes, the school will host a reception in the same building with complimentary light bites and beverages.

For graduates participating in the ceremony, we encourage you to attend the informational webinar scheduled for 6 PM (CT) on May 2. An invitation to that event was sent via email but if you need more information, please contact SBMIAcademics@uth.tmc.edu.

Members of our McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics Community have recently achieved noteworthy accomplishments. We want to recognize and applaud their endeavors.

• Dean Jiajie Zhang, PhD was recently named a 2023 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) – the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.

• DHI Student Nikki Blaze defended her Translational Project in late March and will earn her degree at next month’s Commencement Ceremony.

• UTHealthLeads is a one-year student fellowship program to develop future leaders in health care. Meet the 2023-2024 McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston fellows; MS Students Meryl Joseph & Gbemisola Olabode and PhD Students Alan Pan & Omar Rosales. Learn more about them here.

  

• Associate Professor Kirk Roberts, PhD had a News & Views article published in Nature Medicine earlier this month.
• Thermal Energy Corporation (TECO) owns the district energy system that supplies thermal utilities to the Texas Medical Center. TECO recently published an annual report that includes an article featuring Dean Jiajie Zhang, PhD as he examines the important role AI plays in molding the future of medicine.

• PhD Student Ran Hu presented during the 2024 AMIA Informatics Summit last month. His student paper was titled “An Automated Approach for Identifying Erroneous IS-A Relations in SNOMED CT.”

Our spring 2024 Poster Session will take place on campus on Monday, April 29 at 4:00 PM (CT). While most students will participate on campus (1825 Pressler Street in the IMM Building), a small percentage will use a virtual platform for presenting. Join us as the students present their research

Please contact the Office of Academic Affairs if you have questions about the event.

McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics is hosting a free, in-person workshop on May 29. The Generative AI Now! (GAIN) Workshop will explore the basics of generative AI, current regulations and ethical issues, as well as patient safety and risk management concerns.

The workshop is geared toward working professionals and will conclude with a 75-minute lab on effective, prompt engineering. While the event is free, registration is required and space is limited. Click here to learn more and register.

The deadline for abstract submission for the Inaugural AI Symposium in Healthcare has been extended to April 27.

The event will be held on May 30-31, 2024, at UT Southwestern in Dallas. The symposium will showcase the latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) across research, education, and clinical care from UT System investigators. The Symposium will serve as a platform to foster strategic collaboration among institutions within the UT System and provide valuable networking opportunities for AI researchers.

For more information about submissions and registration, visit https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/ai-symposium/.

The Office of Academic Affairs will open the Fall 2024 Scholarship Application for current students on April 29. Information about the application will be sent to current students via their UTHealth Houston email address.

The application deadline will be May 31 so we encourage all current students who will be enrolled in fall 2024 courses to look for notifications about the application and apply.

• Professor Dean Sittig, PhD, talked to the Association of Healthcare Journalists about the impact of the Change Healthcare cyberattack.
• Professor James Langabeer, PhD gave tips to MoneyGeek on how to find the most affordable health insurance.
  • He was also interviewed by the Fort Worth Report about a long-term care hospital that closed its doors because of financial issues. The story was picked up by NPR’s KERA News in North Texas.
  • Dr. Langabeer also wrote an article for Forbes this month that explores embracing strategic collaboration to bolster healthcare strategies.