Jake Y. Chen, Ph.D.Jake Y. Chen, Ph.D., the associate director of the Informatics Institute in the School of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been elected a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. Chen is one of nine new fellows who will be welcomed at ceremonies Nov. 17 during the American Medical Informatics Association 2019 Annual Symposium.
The ACMI recognizes those who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of biomedical informatics. Incorporated in 1984, the ACMI has more than 400 fellows in the United States and worldwide. Chen is the third fellow at UAB and only the third in the state of Alabama, joining James Cimino, M.D., director of the UAB Informatics Institute, elected in 1992, and Eta Berner, Ed.D., professor in the School of Health Professions, elected in 1999.
Chen’s research focus is in translational bioinformatics — the science of collecting, representing, storing, retrieving and processing data and knowledge for the improvement of human health. He is particularly interested in systems biology, data mining, advanced visual analytics for therapeutic discovery and clinical decision-making applications. He has published more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers and edited two bioinformatics books, “Biological Database Modeling” and “Biological Data Mining.”
Chen is also a professor in the Department of Genetics and a senior scientist in the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a frequent grant review panelist for the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and Department of Defense in bioinformatics.
Incorporated in 1984, ACMI dissolved its separate corporate status to merge with the American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics and the Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care when the American Medical Informatics Association was formed in 1989. The College now exists as an entity within AMIA, with its own bylaws and regulations.
AMIA is the leading professional association for informatics professionals, representing 5,500 informatics professionals from more than 65 countries. As the voice of the nation’s top biomedical and health informatics professionals, AMIA and its members play a leading role in assessing the effect of health innovations on health policy and advancing the field of informatics. AMIA actively supports five domains in informatics: translational bioinformatics, clinical research informatics, clinical informatics, consumer health informatics and public health informatics.