People > Profile
Jonathan C. Silverstein, MD, MS
- Professor of Biomedical Informatics
- Chief Research Informatics Officer
Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) | University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Biography
Dr. Jonathan C. Silverstein is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and serves as Chief Research Informatics Officer. He is a physician, surgeon, and biomedical informatician whose career has spanned academic medicine, health systems, and industry. His work focuses on clinical and translational informatics, learning health systems, biomedical data integration, and the development of large-scale research data infrastructure. He also holds an affiliate appointment with Pitt Cyber and a secondary appointment in the Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
Computational & Clinical Expertise
Dr. Silverstein’s clinical expertise includes general surgery and clinical informatics. He has extensive experience in health information technology, clinical research informatics, and learning health systems, with a focus on using electronic health record data and enterprise informatics infrastructure to improve care, research, and organizational decision-making.
Research Interests
Dr. Silverstein’s research focuses on clinical and translational informatics, learning health systems, and biomedical data integration. His work has emphasized the design of large-scale informatics infrastructure for clinical research, data sharing, and evidence generation across health systems. He has also contributed to knowledge integration, biomedical visualization, cloud-based medical natural language processing, and research data warehousing. More recently, his scholarship includes biomedical knowledge graphs, privacy-preserving data linkage, and data platforms that support precision medicine and population health research.
Specialties
- Clinical Informatics
- Learning Health Systems
- Research Informatics
- Biomedical Data Integration
- Health Information Technology
- Translational Informatics
Education & Training
- B.S., MicrobiologyUniversity of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, IL1983-1986
- MDWashington University, St. Louis, MO1986-1990
- Fellowship, Research FellowshipPharmacology & Medical Informatics Laboratory, Washington University, St. Louis, MO1990-1991
- Residency, General SurgeryRush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, Chicago, IL1991-1996
- MS, Clinical EpidemiologyHarvard University, Boston, MA1998
Certifications
- DiplomateNational Board of Medical Examiners1992
- Board Certified, SurgeryAmerican Board of Surgery1997-2007
- Licensed Physician and SurgeonState of Illinois1993-present
Awards & Distinctions
- Fellow, American College of Medical InformaticsACMI2007
- Fellow, American College of SurgeonsACS1999
- Davis Family Chair of InformaticsNorthShore University HealthSystem2011–2016
- Winning Team, NAACCR 2018 Cancer Informatics HackathonNorth American Association of Central Cancer Registries2018
Representative Publications
Silverstein JC, Dech F, Edison M, et al. (2002). Virtual reality: immersive hepatic surgery educational environment (IHSEE). Surgery, 132(2), 274–277.
Kaspar M, Parsad NM, Silverstein JC. (2013). An optimized web-based approach for collaborative stereoscopic medical visualization. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 20(3), 535–543.
Visweswaran S, McLay B, Cappella N, et al., & Silverstein JC. (2021). An atomic approach to the design and implementation of a research data warehouse. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
Callahan TJ, Tripodi IJ, Stefanski AL, et al., & Silverstein JC. (2024). An open source knowledge graph ecosystem for the life sciences. Scientific Data, 11, 363.
Börner K, Blood PD, Silverstein J, et al. (2025). Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP): 3D Human Reference Atlas construction and usage. Nature Methods.