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
2020 Winners (click on title to access the dissertation)
- Maulik Kamdar, Stanford University [First Prize]
Dissertation: “A Web-Based Integration Framework Over Heterogeneous Biomedical Data and Knowledge Sources” - Sharon Davis, Vanderbilt University [Honorable Mention]
Dissertation: “Stabilizing Calibration of Clinical Prediction Models in Non-Stationary Environments: Methods Supporting Data-Driven Model Updating”
- Yingxiang Huang, University of California San Diego [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Preservation of Patient Level Privacy: Federated Classification and Calibration Models” - Pengtao Xie, Carnegie Mellon University [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Diversity-promoting and Large-scale Machine Learning for Healthcare” - Zexian Zeng, Northwestern University [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Mutational Processes Modeling and Early Cancer Diagnosis”
2019 Winners (click on title to access the dissertation)
- Travis Goodwin, University of Texas at Dallas [First Prize]
Dissertation: “Medical Question Answering and Patient Cohort Retrieval” - Jessica (Jette) Lowell Henderson, University of Texas at Austin [Honorable Mention]
Dissertation: “Learning and Validating Clinically Meaningful Phenotypes from Electronic Health Data”
- Zhaobin Kuang, University of Wisconsin, Madison [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Towards Learning with High Causal Fidelity from Longitudinal Event Data” - Lina Sulieman, Vanderbilt University [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Learning Clinical Data Representations for Machine Learning” - Ye Ye. University of Pittsburgh [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Transfer Learning for Bayesian Case Detection Systems”
2018 Winners
- 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"
- Brett Beaulieu-Jones, University of Pennsylvania [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Machine Learning Methods to Idenetify Hidden Phenotypes in the Electronic Health Record.” - Marzyeh Ghassemi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Representation Learning in Multi-dimensional Clinical Timeseries for Risk and Event Prediction” - Wei Wei, University of California San Diego [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Information Retrieval in Biomedical Research: From Articles to Datasets” - Weiyi Xia, Vanderbilt University [Finalist]
Dissertation:“Optimizing the Privacy Risk – Utility Framework in Data Publication”
2017 Winners
- 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"
- Genna R. Cohen, University of Michigan [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Physician Practice Variation in Electronic Health Record Documentation” - Steven G. Johnson, University of Minnesota [Finalist]
Dissertation: “A Data Quality Framework for the Secondary use of Electronic Health Information” - Azadeh Nikfarjam, Arizona State University [Finalist]
Dissertation: “Health Information Extraction from Social Media” - Kun-Hsing Yu, Stanford University [Finalist]
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).
Dissertation Award Selection Committee
The 2021 judging committee includes:
- John H. Holmes (Chair), PhD, FACMI, University of Pennsylvania
- Riccardo Bellazzi, PhD, FACMI, University of Pavia, Italyy
- Gregory Cooper, MD, PhD, FACMI, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
- Gretchen Purcell Jackson, MD, PhD, FACMI, Vanderbilt University and IBM Watson Health
- Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, FACMI, University of California San Diego
- Peter Szolovits, PhD, FACMI, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Chunhua Weng, PhD, FACMI, Columbia University
- Karen Greenwood (ex officio), AMIA Interim President and CEO
- Jeff Williamson (ex officio), AMIA Vice President, Academic Affairs and Education
The website for submission of 2021 nominations will open December 15, 2020. 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 February 1.
