Johns Hopkins University recently announced the results of a yearlong, faculty-led process that has identified seven Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships research clusters to drive interdisciplinary discoveries as a central part of the university’s new Data Science and AI Institute. Faculty from the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare have been selected to lead three of the seven clusters.
The Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships (BDP) program, made possible through a gift from Hopkins alumnus Michael R. Bloomberg, was established in 2013 as an ambitious investment in interdisciplinary research to bridge academic disciplines and open novel fields of inquiry to address issues of critical global importance. Starting from an initial cohort of 50 individual BDP positions, the program has more than doubled in size through a faculty-led process for identifying areas of inquiry that are best pursued through new research clusters. Last year, Johns Hopkins announced an expansion of this successful program as a signature element of the Johns Hopkins Data Science and AI Institute.
As part of this latest expansion, 30 new BDP positions will be affiliated with the Data Science and AI Institute. Of those, 22 BDPs will be allocated through the new research clusters, weaving data science, data-driven research, and AI even more fully into the fabric and future of the university in areas such as medical diagnosis, foundational machine learning, natural intelligence, neuroscience, genomics, cancer research, and the computational social sciences.
The seven new clusters are the result of a rigorous, faculty-led selection process that began last winter, when Johns Hopkins called upon its faculty to submit creative and exciting ideas for clusters, resulting in 38 letters of intent spanning multiple domains and 12 university units. Thirteen teams were invited to submit full proposals, which were reviewed by external panels of preeminent scholars in the relevant fields. These diverse review committee members included named professors, MacArthur Fellows, and elected members of National Academies of Medicine, Science, and Engineering from esteemed universities across the U.S. and abroad.
The new clusters led by faculty from the Malone Center are:
Global Advances in Medical Artificial Intelligence: Creating, Evaluating, and Scaling New Care Models for Risk Prediction, Screening, and Diagnosis
Leads: Kathy McDonald, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Health Systems, Safety, and Quality, School of Nursing and School of Medicine; Tinglong Dai, Bernard T. Ferrari Professor of Business, Carey Business School and Professor of Nursing, School of Nursing
Powering Biomedical Discovery with Data Science and AI for Genomics
Leads: Alexis Battle, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Genetic Medicine, Whiting School of Engineering and School of Medicine; Joel Bader, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science and Oncology, Whiting School of Engineering and School of Medicine; Michael Schatz, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Computational Biology and Oncology, Whiting School of Engineering, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and School of Medicine; Dan Arking, Professor of Genetic Medicine, School of Medicine
Theoretical Foundations of (Machine) Learning
Leads: Brice Ménard, Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences; Alex Szalay, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Big Data, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering; Mark Dredze, John C. Malone Professor of Computer Science, Whiting School of Engineering; Soledad Villar, Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Whiting School of Engineering