Directory
This Directory includes Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni selectable by category, search or alphabetical by last name. Over 110 students have graduated from the Department of Biomedical Informatics (25+ PhD, 50+ MS, 25+ Certificate). The diversity of careers available to DBMI alumnus is evident in their biographies. Many of our graduates are teaching and performing research in academic institutions, such as Vanderbilt University, Arizona State University, and New York University while others have entered private industry with companies such as Cerner Corporation and Boston Scientific; some have positions in government agencies, such as the NIH and AHRQ, while others are at major medical centers, serving in roles such as Chief Medical Information Officer. We maintain a database of the career paths of our graduates. If you are an alumnus, please contact us if you would like to submit or update information!
Shuangxia Ren
Biography
Degrees: Ph.D., Intelligent systems program under biomedical informatics track, University of Pittsburgh, 2024
Research Interests: My research focuses on developing interpretable machine learning models for precision oncology. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, I work on integrating multi-omics data—including somatic genomic alterations, gene expression, and clinical variables—to predict drug response and survival outcomes in cancer patients. I design attention-based variational autoencoders and reinforcement learning frameworks to enhance both the performance and interpretability of predictive models, with an emphasis on actionable insights for clinical decision-making. My current work addresses the challenges of drug resistance, tumor heterogeneity, and combination therapy through biologically grounded, data-driven approaches, particularly in the context of colon rectal cancer and other solid tumors.