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!
Yanshan Wang
Biography
Yanshan Wang’s research centers on health informatics and clinical research informatics. He develops innovative methodologies using artificial intelligence (AI), specifically natural language processing (NLP) techniques to serve the needs of patients, physicians and researchers using electronic health records (EHRs), particularly free-text EHRs. Wang has collaborated with clinicians and researchers to create multiple NLP algorithms that extract meaningful information from clinical notes. These novel NLP approaches have been applied in areas such as Alzheimer’s disease, mental health disorders, cancer phenotyping and social determinants of health.
Wang is involved in various NIH-funded projects aimed at creating advanced clinical NLP algorithms and infrastructures to support clinical and translational research. Notably, he serves as the NLP Lead for the ENACT Network funded by NCATS, which disseminates NLP infrastructure to 57 CTSA hubs. He also leads the development of the Rehabilitation Datamart with Informatics Infrastructure for Research (ReDWINE), designed to streamline EHR data access and enhance informatics tools for rehabilitation research at SHRS.
Currently, Wang leads the Clinical Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence Innovation Laboratory (PittNAIL). PittNAIL focuses on cutting-edge technologies in AI and NLP for health care applications, pioneering the use of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) in clinical NLP. The lab is among the first to use these LLMs in zero-shot and few-shot settings for clinical purposes. Recently, their research has expanded to evaluate generative AI models and assess the impact of generative AI in health care, particularly its ethical implications. Wang is the original author of the GREAT PLEA ethical principles for using generative AI in health care.