AMIA recognizes the critical importance of fostering the development and discovery of new informatics science as well as the recognition and support of AMIA members who will grow the field and become the next generation of informatics leaders. This talent is nurtured in graduate and doctoral research programs.
The AMIA Doctoral Dissertation Award offers high-value and prestigious recognition for the top doctoral dissertation each year that contributes to the science of informatics in any biomedical application domain or domains. In 2016 JAMIA published some suggested guidelines for the preparation of high-quality dissertations in biomedical informatics:
The organization and content of informatics doctoral dissertations
Award Prizes
Each of the two winners receives:
- Cash award ($7500 for first prize, $2500 for honorable mention)
- semi-plenary presentation on his/her award-winning research
- Formal award presentation at the AMIA Annual Symposium
- AMIA Annual Symposium registration waived
- travel and accommodation stipend
- publicity
2018 Winners
Winners of the Award:
- Bethany Percha, Stanford University [First Prize]
Dissertation: “Biomedical Text Mining From Context”
- Yonatan Halpern, New York University [Honorable Mention]
Dissertation: “Semi-Supervised Learning for Electronic Phenotyping in Support of Precision Medicine"
Additional Finalists:
- Brett Beaulieu-Jones, University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation: “Machine Learning Methods to Idenetify Hidden Phenotypes in the Electronic Health Record.” - Marzyeh Ghassemi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dissertation: “Representation Learning in Multi-dimensional Clinical Timeseries for Risk and Event Prediction” - Wei Wei, University of California San Diego
Dissertation: “Information Retrieval in Biomedical Research: From Articles to Datasets” - Weiyi Xia, Vanderbilt University
Dissertation:“Optimizing the Privacy Risk – Utility Framework in Data Publication”
2017 Winners
Inaugural Winners of the Award:
- Rimma Perotte (Pivovarov), Columbia University [First Prize]
Dissertation: “Electronic Health Record Summarization over Heterogeneous and Irregularly Sampled Clinical Data”
- Yuan Luo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Honorable Mention]
Dissertation: “Towards Unified Biomedical Modeling with Subgraph Mining and Factorization Algorithms"
Additional Finalists:
- Genna R. Cohen, University of Michigan
Dissertation: “Physician Practice Variation in Electronic Health Record Documentation” - Steven G. Johnson, University of Minnesota
Dissertation: “A Data Quality Framework for the Secondary use of Electronic Health Information” - Azadeh Nikfarjam, Arizona State University
Dissertation: “Health Information Extraction from Social Media” - Kun-Hsing Yu, Stanford University
Dissertation: “Integrating Omics and Histopathology Profiles for Precision Medicine”
Funding for the Award
An endowment fund was created to support the Doctoral Dissertation Award in perpetuity. AMIA is grateful to the Charter Donors who offered support for the fund in its formative period (between the AMIA Symposium in 2015 and March 2017). The Campaign was chaired by Dr. Ted Shortliffe (who also offered a 1:1 match for all donations up to $100,000). Additional donations can be made on the AMIA Central donation page.
Dissertation Award Selection Committee
The 2018 judging committee includes:
- Edward H. Shortliffe, MD, PhD, FACMI (Chair), Columbia University, Arizona State University, and Weill Cornell Medical College (Adjunct Professorships)
- Russ B. Altman, MD, PhD, FACMI, Stanford University School of Medicine
- Riccardo Bellazzi, PhD, FACMI, University of Pavia, Italy
- John H. Holmes, PhD, FACMI, University of Pennsylvania
- Omolola Ogunyemi, PhD, Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science
- Jessica Tenenbaum, PhD, FACMI, Duke University
- Neil Sarkar, PhD, MLIS, FACMI (AMIA Board Liaison), Brown University
- Douglas Fridsma, MD, PhD, FACMI (ex officio), AMIA President
- Jeff Williamson (ex officio), AMIA Vice President, Academic Affairs and Education
Nominations for 2018 are now closed. The web site for submission of 2019 nominations will open in January. Information about eligibility and judging criteria is available on the nominations page. Nomination forms are also available on that page and may be downloaded for offline preparation of a nominations packet. Just be sure that the final nomination materials are uploaded no later than January 31st.
