Founding Director, Systems Pharmacology AI Research Center (SPARC)
Triton Endowed Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science
Adjunct Professor of Genetics, Computer Science, and Biomedical Engineering
Director, NIH Common Fund Data Ecosystems (CFDE) Integration and Coordination Center
Director, Systems Pharmacology AI Research Center
jakechen@uab.edu
Research and Teaching Interests:
- Translational bioinformatics
- System biology
- Data mining
- Advanced visual analytics for therapeutic discovery
- Clinical decision-making applications
Dr. Chen is the founding director of the UAB Systems AI Pharmacology Research Center (SPARC). This research center aims to advance the use of artificial intelligence (AI), patient digital twins, and systems pharmacology in drug discovery through research innovation and multi-disciplinary collaborations. He was previously the founding director of Indiana Center for Systems Biology and Personalized Medicine. Chen has over 25 years of R&D experience in biological data mining, systems biology, and applying them to precision medicine and drug discovery, with over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and a distinguished member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). He also serves on the editorial boards of BMC Bioinformatics, Journal of American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), and Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. In 2023, he was awarded the Pioneer Award by the Chinese Association of Science and Technology USA Chapter (CAST-USA) for his contributions to AI in drug discovery leadership in academic institutions.
In the past decade, he was recognized as Indiana MIRA’s “Technology Educator of the Year” finalist (2015), by Deep Knowledge Analytics as one of the “Top 100 AI Leaders in Drug Discovery and Healthcare” (2019), and by Chinese American Association of Science and Technology (CAST-USA) for the “Pioneer Award” (2023). Chen also holds joint appointments at the Departments of Genetics, Computer Science, and Biomedical Engineering.
Read more about Dr. Chen on his Scholars page.