Degui Zhi is the founding chair of the Department of Bioinformatics and Systems Medicine, McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics, UTHealth at Houston. He is the Glassell Family Professor and founding director of the Center for AI and Genome Informatics (AIGI). He received his Ph.D. in bioinformatics from the University of California, San Diego. He is interested in developing AI deep learning and informatics methods for biomedical big data. His current funded projects cover topics in AI-powered brain imaging and retina imaging, genetics, population genetics informatics, and EHR predictive modeling. He is also interested in using LLM and genitive AI for scientific discovery. He has been teaching deep learning for biomedical informatics courses since 2018. He is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI).
Cui Tao received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brigham Young University. Currently, she is the Vice President of Mayo Clinic Platform Informatics and the Chair of the Precision Medicine Platform Science Advisory Committee at the American Heart Association. She builds and shapes complex knowledge systems, enabling seamless communication and data exchange in healthcare. She also pioneers methods to extract insights from diverse datasets. In doing so, she promotes a more comprehensive understanding of healthcare systems, needs and events. Her wide-ranging research interests include: (1) Ontologies; (2) Standard terminologies; (3) Information and knowledge extraction and integration; and (4) Machine learning and deep learning in clinical and translational studies.
