UIC Center For Clinical And Translational Sciences

Dr. Hynes oversees programs within the BI Core. In addition, she is responsible for working with CCTS leadership and other CCTS core and program directors to coordinate the activities of the Biomedical Informatics Core with the broader CCTS program. Dr. Hynes is Professor(Visiting) in the Department of Medicine, College of Medicine and Research Scientist in the Department of Health Policy Administration in the School of Public Health. She also maintains a joint appointment as a Research Career Scientist in the Department of Veterans Affairs, currently based at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital. Dr. Hynes has developed and utilized databases and informatics throughout her health science research career. In her ten years as director of the VA Information Resource Center (VIReC), she has overseen the development of a knowledge management system on databases in the VA, development of a research data warehouse that integrates VA and Medicare data, creation of a database and informatics helpdesk and consultation service, and the establishment of educational programs in clinical informatics. In addition to directing operations for the BI Core she will direct the Core’s Clinical Research Data Resources program.

Dr. Brooks serves as the Associate Director for Infrastructure Development and coordinates the development, implementation, and maintenance of the BI infrastructure. Dr. Brooks directs the Health Sciences Group at National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) where he is currently working to adapt the common computational infrastructures NCSA is building to the biomedical and public health fields. These projects include developing cyber environments for infectious disease surveillance, modeling, and response; endemic disease control; and patient safety. He has recently been working with CDC to develop publicly accessible web resources to map the global risk of malaria and other endemic diseases.

Annette Valenta serves as the Associate Director for Informatics Education and Consulting Services. She coordinates the education programs and consultative services of the Biomedical Informatics Core. Dr. Valenta is the Associate Dean for Health Informatics and Technology in the College of Applied Health Sciences. Under her direction, the program developed the nation’s first online-only advanced degrees and certificates in health informatics. She also developed the College of Applied Health Sciences’ two joint-degree programs: the MS in health informatics paired with either an MS in nursing administration or a doctor of pharmacy. Her recent research involves technology evaluation, and she has expanded the research and educational programs of the UIC Virtual Reality in Medicine Laboratory.

Jie Liang serves as the Lead Biomedical Informatician for the BI Core. He provides expertise in computational genomics and proteomics and will facilitate collaborations between informatics experts and clinical and translational researchers. He founded the Bioinformatics MS/PHD Program at UIC in 2003 and currently leads this very successful program of 27 PhD students. He has extensive experience in formulating and developing computational software that addresses the needs of biomedical researchers including the widely used CastP web server for protein surface analysis(>3,000 users worldwide).

Andrew Boyd serves as the Lead Clinical Liaison for Informatics for the BI Core. He provides expertise in clinical data resources and will facilitate consultative services and collaborations between informatics experts and clinical and translational researchers. Dr. Boyd is a Research Assistant Professor in both the College of Medicine in the Department of Medical Education and the College of Applied Health Sciences in the Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences. He assisted with the development of the University of Michigan’s NIH-supported Honest Broker System, a federated clinical research system that integrated diverse clinical and research resources for centralized accessibility.

Andrew Wadsworth a Research Scientist and human-computer interface expert at NCSA, is working with the BII development team to ensure fidelity of the system to these user-oriented design principles, and he will oversee the incorporation of user-oriented design principles in other research-driven application development projects in future years. Dr. Wadsworth has led technology development teams at the University of Illinois and served as a consultant on multinational e-Learning projects. He also founded the Web Technology Group, a multimedia development team of over forty specialists involved in developing user-friendly Web-based courses and multimedia-based distance education programs.