Alejandro Araya
Manager
Alejandro Araya
Manager, Research and Projects
Alejandro Araya joined the Biomedical Informatics Group in 2014. He received his BS in Microbiology from The University of Houston Downtown. In addition to his life sciences background, he has over eight years of software development experience. He has worked on cross institution research projects involving clinical data analysis, natural language processing, and visualization.
Contact Alejandro by email at [email protected] or by telephone at 713-500-3574.
Joseph Applegate
Programmer Analyst
Joseph Applegate
Programmer Analyst
Joseph Applegate received a BS in Management Information Systems from Oklahoma State University, specializing in database analysis and network security. In addition to exploring how information systems can improve healthcare, he has interests in natural language processing, artificial intelligence (especially computer vision), mobile apps and game development. He currently works on analyzing and staging the Clinical Data Warehouse, and supporting applications for the research and medical community.
Contact Joseph by email at [email protected]
Brian Shukwit
Programmer Analyst
Brian Shukwit
Programmer Analyst
Brian Shukwit joined the Biomedical Informatics Group in 2021. He has a BS in Information Systems from Liberty University and has 10 years experience in data management and writing SQL. His interests include data engineering and data technologies. He is also a published fantasy fiction novelist.
Contact Brian by email at [email protected].
Matthew Decaro
Programmer Analyst
Matthew Decaro
Programmer Analyst
Matthew Decaro joined the Biomedical Informatics group in 2022. He received a MS in Physics from Rice University with 5 years of experience in Software Development and Data Analysis. In addition to providing services on the BIG-Arc team, Matthew also participates in medical education research within Dr. Bernstam's group, and is interested in how Statistics and Data Science can improve healthcare quality and outcomes.
Contact Matthew by email at [email protected].
Ketil [Swiss] Kirchhof
Programmer Analyst
Ketil [Swiss] Kirchhof
Programmer Analyst
Ketil [Swiss] Kirchhof joined the Biomedical Informatics group in 2023. He received a BS in Information Technology Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and has 17 years of experience with hardware engineering and 6 years of experience with software engineering. His interests are video games and tabletop roleplaying games, and pretty much anything related to computers.
Contact Swiss by email at [email protected].
Rene Plascencia
Sr. Project Manager
Rene Plascencia
Sr. Project Manager
Rene Plascencia joined the Biomedical Informatics Group in 2025. He received his medical education from Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara and executive MBA from the University of Houston Bauer College of Business. He has 8+ years of clinical research experience working with industry-sponsored pharmaceutical drug trials & investigational device trials, along with PI-initiated, and PI-sponsored trials.
Contact Rene by email at [email protected]
