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Richard David Boyce, PhD
- Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics (Tenured)
- Co-Director, Artificial Intelligence, Biomedical Informatics, and Data Science (AIBIDS) Training Program
- Secondary Appointment, School of Pharmacy
- Secondary Appointment, Intelligent Systems Program, School of Computing and Information
Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) | University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Biography
Dr. Richard D. Boyce is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh, with secondary appointments in the School of Pharmacy and the Intelligent Systems Program. He serves as Co-Director and Contact Principal Investigator of the NLM-funded Artificial Intelligence, Biomedical Informatics, and Data Science (AIBIDS) training program. His research focuses on AI-driven health data science for medication safety, pharmacovigilance, and clinical decision support. He develops knowledge representation and generative AI methods to advance clinical research informatics using real-world evidence from observational health data. He is a national leader in drug–drug interaction informatics and pharmacovigilance knowledge infrastructure, inventor on 9+ technology disclosures and two provisional patents, and has mentored 7 PhD students, 8 MS students, 3 postdoctoral fellows, and numerous undergraduate trainees.
Research Interests
Dr. Boyce’s research centers on real-world data science and observational health data analytics to improve medication safety and pharmacovigilance. His work integrates artificial intelligence, knowledge graphs, and clinical decision support to enable scalable evidence generation from large health datasets. Current projects focus on using agentic AI and large language models to improve FAERS adverse event capture, predicting natural product–drug interactions using knowledge graph embeddings, identifying potentially inappropriate prescribing in older adults from EHR data, and developing machine learning models for adverse drug event risk prediction. He also leads efforts to broaden participation of underrepresented students in biomedical AI through the NLM-funded AIBIDS program in collaboration with Gallaudet University.
Specialties
- Pharmacovigilance and Medication Safety Informatics
- Agentic AI and Real-World Evidence Generation
- Knowledge Graphs and Biomedical Knowledge Representation
- Clinical Decision Support and Learning Health Systems
- Natural Product–Drug Interaction Informatics
- Broadening Participation in Biomedical AI Education
Websites & Links
Education & Training
- B.S., Computer Science (Cum Laude)Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA1996–2003
- M.S., Biomedical and Health InformaticsUniversity of Washington, Seattle, WA2003–2005
- Ph.D., Biomedical and Health InformaticsUniversity of Washington, Seattle, WA2005–2008
- Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biomedical InformaticsUniversity of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA2008–2010
- Scholar, Comparative Effectiveness Research Scholars ProgramUniversity of Pittsburgh, Institute for Clinical Research Education2010–2013
Awards & Distinctions
- Educator Professionalism AccoladeUniversity of Pittsburgh2025
- Nominated for Titan AwardOHDSI Collaborative2024, 2025
- Best Poster AwardISMB/ECCB2021
- Distinguished Paper AwardThe 14th World Congress on Medical and Health InformaticsMEDINFO 2013
- Distinguished Paper AwardAMIA Summit on Translational Bioinformatics2013
Representative Publications
Dilán-Pantojas IO, Boonchalermvichien T, Taneja SB, Li X, Chapin MR, Karcher S, Boyce RD. Broadening the capture of natural products mentioned in FAERS using fuzzy string-matching and a Siamese neural network. Sci Rep. 2024;14(1):1272. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-51004-4. PMID: 38218987.
Gray MP, Kellum JA, Kirisci L, Boyce RD, Kane-Gill SL. Long-Term Outcomes Associated With β-Lactam Allergies. JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(5):e2412313. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.12313. PMID: 38758551.
Taneja SB, Dilán-Pantojas IO, Boyce RD. Predicting Natural Product-Drug Interactions with Knowledge Graph Embeddings. AMIA Jt Summits Transl Sci Proc. 2025;2025:556–565. PMID: 40502231. (Winner of Best Student Paper Award).
Sivaraman V, Vaishampayan A, Li X, Buck B, Ma Z, Boyce RD, Perer A. Tempo: Helping Data Scientists and Domain Experts Collaboratively Specify Predictive Modeling Tasks. ACM CHI 2025. DOI: 10.1145/3706598.3713664.
Albert SM, Li X, Kane-Gill SL, Lombardi J, Akenapalli K, Boyce RD. Incidence of Potentially Inappropriate Prescribing: Longitudinal Investigation of Outpatient EHR Prescriptions. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2025;73(3):728–736. doi: 10.1111/jgs.19340. PMID: 39739457.
Research Grants
| Grant / Funding Agency | Role | Grant Number | Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artificial Intelligence, Biomedical Informatics, and Data Science (AIBIDS) Training Program National Library of Medicine | MPI (Contact PI) | R25LM014208 | 09/2022–08/2027 |
| University of Pittsburgh Pepper Center National Institute on Aging (NIA) | Co-Investigator | P30 AG024827 | Active |
| Boyce IPA VA Salt Lake City Health Care | IPA Recipient | IPA | 10/2022–09/2028 |
Trainees
| Trainee | Degree Program / Role & Years |
|---|---|
| Sanya Taneja | PhD Student, Intelligent Systems Program (2021–present) — Primary research advisor and dissertation committee chair |
| Israel O. Dilán-Pantojas | NLM PhD Fellow, Biomedical Informatics (2022–present) — Primary research advisor and dissertation committee chair |
| Kojo Abanyie, PharmD | NLM Postdoctoral Fellow (2022–2024) — Primary research advisor |
| Hailey Perkins | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2023) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Angelina Baker | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2024) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Ryane Smalley | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2024) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Keila Santiago | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2024) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Ethan Chang | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2025) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Kevin Lopes | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2025) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Gigi Zheng | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2025) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Talayeh Delis | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2025) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Blessed Mbogo | NLM AIBIDS Summer Research Program (2025) — Primary summer research advisor |
| Thomas Tam | Fellow, Jewish Healthcare Foundation (2025) — Business translational mentor |
| Matthew Gray | PhD Student, Pharmacy, University of Pittsburgh (2020–2024) — PhD dissertation committee member (Kane-Gill, chair) |
| Lana M. Chahine, MD, PhD | PhD Student, Graduate School of Public Health (2021–2024) — Dissertation committee member |
| Scott Malec | NLM Postdoctoral Fellow (2018–2021); K99/R00 (2021–2022) — Postdoctoral research advisor; now Assistant Professor, University of New Mexico Health Sciences |
| Olga Kravchenko | NLM Postdoctoral Fellow (2021–2022) — Postdoctoral research advisor; now AI Faculty, Dept. of Family Medicine, University of Pittsburgh |