The Team

Michelle Birkett is a tenured associate professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences. She directs the Center for Computational and Social Sciences in Health (COMPASS) within the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM). Dr. Birkett’s research uses network and quantitative methodologies to understand the social contextual influence of stigma on the health and wellbeing of marginalized populations, and in particular, sexual and gender minority youth. This work is influenced by a multilevel perspective of health that considers direct and indirect influences of multiple levels of the social and physical environment. This multilevel approach to understanding health underlies her interest in network data and her commitment to conducting research that leads to social change at multiple levels of society to eliminate health disparities.

Dr. Birkett has led multiple NIH-funded projects and has a wealth of expertise in the collection and analysis of network data. She is an NIH Career Awardee for her work understanding network, multilevel, and contextual influences on racial disparities in HIV within young men who have sex with men. She also directs Network Canvas, a software development project which seeks to simplify the collection and streamline the management of social data, thereby allowing health researchers to assess more nuanced associations between social contextual factors and disease. An author of more than 75 articles, Birkett's work has appeared in academic journals like The American Journal of Public Health, The Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, The Journal of Adolescent Health, Social Networks, as well as popular outlets such as The Atlantic, Reuters, and Wired. In 2018 she was selected as an inaugural member of the New Voices Program of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, a initiative to promote new and diverse scientific voices within the National Academies.

I am Professor of Pediatrics, Julia and David Uihlein Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, and Chief Ethics Officer for the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. I am also an attending physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in the division of pediatric critical care medicine.

My research interests include communication, decision making, palliative care, and ethics. Currently, my research focuses on communication and decision making among patients, family caregivers, and professional caregivers in the pediatric intensive care unit using family care conferences. I also study disparities in access to bereavement support for people after the death of a child and opportunities to improve enrollment in clinical research through recruitment in community-based clinics using novel technology.

My work uses qualitative and quantitative methods as well as patient/stakeholder engagement and community-based participatory research methods. I serve on mentorship teams of K awardees and early career investigators. My research has been funded by the NIH, PCORI, National Palliative Research Center, American Cancer Society, and the Greenwall Foundation. I am dedicated to helping others achieve their full potential and follow their passion. 

Yuan Luo is currently Associate Professor at Department of Preventive Medicine, at Feinberg School of Medicine in Northwestern University. He is Chief AI Officer at Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) and Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine. Dr. Luo earned his PhD degree from MIT EECS with a math minor. He won the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) New Investigator Award in 2020. He served on AMIA Membership and Outreach Committee. His publications appear in leading journals including Nature Medicine, JAMA, AJRCCM, JAMIA, JBI etc. He has published in and/or served as PC members for top AI and informatics conferences including AAAI, KDD, CVPR, ACL, AMIA etc.

Abel Kho, MD, MS, FACMI, is Tenured Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, Founding Director of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM), and Director of the Center for Health Information Partnerships (CHIP) within the Institute for Public Health and Medicine. His work focuses on bringing people, data, and tools together to enable the success of students, researchers, and community partners.  

Abel is the Principal Investigator (PI) for several multi-institutional collaborative projects. He helped found CAPriCORN, a patient-centered outcomes and research network. He is the PI along with Dr. Patricia Franklin for the AHRQ/PCORI funded K12 training award, A Chicago Center of Excellence in Learning Health Systems Research Training (ACCELERAT), which builds upon CAPriCORN to train the next generation of leaders in learning health systems research. 

Abel’s research has focused on how to link and analyze data efficiently across sites while preserving individual and institutional privacy.  Privacy preserving record linkage and analysis methods can help form a more complete picture for research and population health.  For example, as a member of the All of Us Research Program Data and Research Center, Abel is studying whether data linkage can improve the completeness and quality of EHR data for study participants. In 2020, he was awarded the Don Lindbergh Award for Innovation in Informatics for his work in the development and application of privacy preserving record linkage methods. 

As a primary care provider, Abel leads projects improving quality of care in the community. With Dr. JD Smith and Dr. Paris Davis, Abel is Principal Investigator for the NHLBI-funded CIRCL-Chicago project, part of the DECIPHeR Alliance, which aims to address disparities in hypertension control in the South Side of Chicago.  Along with Dr. Theresa Walunas, he is Principal Investigator for the AHRQ-funded INSPIRE (Intervention in Small Primary Care Practices to Implement Reduction in Unhealthy Alcohol Use) project, which supports and evaluates the implementation of screening and treatment interventions for patients with unhealthy alcohol use. 

Twitter: @AbelKho 
View Abel’s NU Faculty Profile for publications, news, and more. 

Yuan Luo is currently Associate Professor at Department of Preventive Medicine, at Feinberg School of Medicine in Northwestern University. He is Chief AI Officer at Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) and Institute for Augmented Intelligence in Medicine. Dr. Luo earned his PhD degree from MIT EECS with a math minor. He won the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) New Investigator Award in 2020. He served on AMIA Membership and Outreach Committee. His publications appear in leading journals including Nature Medicine, JAMA, AJRCCM, JAMIA, JBI etc. He has published in and/or served as PC members for top AI and informatics conferences including AAAI, KDD, CVPR, ACL, AMIA etc.

I am Professor of Pediatrics, Julia and David Uihlein Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, and Chief Ethics Officer for the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. I am also an attending physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in the division of pediatric critical care medicine.

My research interests include communication, decision making, palliative care, and ethics. Currently, my research focuses on communication and decision making among patients, family caregivers, and professional caregivers in the pediatric intensive care unit using family care conferences. I also study disparities in access to bereavement support for people after the death of a child and opportunities to improve enrollment in clinical research through recruitment in community-based clinics using novel technology.

My work uses qualitative and quantitative methods as well as patient/stakeholder engagement and community-based participatory research methods. I serve on mentorship teams of K awardees and early career investigators. My research has been funded by the NIH, PCORI, National Palliative Research Center, American Cancer Society, and the Greenwall Foundation. I am dedicated to helping others achieve their full potential and follow their passion. 

Bill Temps learned computer programming from books before he had a computer to use, before the IBM PC was introduced. Later, he worked as a computer operator and programmer for Northwestern; while there, he recommended that all new programs use four-digit years to avoid problems with the year 2000, but since this was far off in the distant future, the suggestion was not accepted.

Most of his career has been in banking and finance, including what is now JP Morgan Chase and Merrill Lynch (supporting computer systems -- nothing to do with the banking crisis or Great Recession). In the early 1990s, he switched from the IBM Virtual Machine facility (VM) to Unix system support. While employed by IBM Global Services, between mid-1998 and 2000, he led a team to prepare a bank's Unix systems for the year 2000.

He returned to Northwestern in 2012, doing programming and statistical analysis in support of Dennis West's RADAR group, investigating adverse effects of prescription drugs. He joined I.AIM in December, 2020, with the title of Solutions Engineer and the goals of resolving problems and facilitating research.