The CDU Center for Biomedical Informatics
People
Richard Baker, M.D.
Dr. Baker's informatics research interests include teleophthalmology image processing and management, telemedicine, electronic medical record development, and evaluation of health information technology.
Dr. Baker holds an undergraduate degree in Physics from Stanford University. He received a medical doctorate degree from Harvard Medical School and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Postdoctoral training includes a fellowship at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, and a National Institutes of Health fellowship in chronic disease epidemiology at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. He was Executive Director and co-founder of the Urban Telemedicine Centers of Excellence. He is Dean of the College of Medicine at Charles Drew University, and an Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Charles Drew University and at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine.
You can search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed service for publications by Richard Baker, MD.
Karen Cheng, Ph.D.
Dr. Cheng's research focuses on how mobile technology can improve delivery of health information and health services. She also studies culturally appropriate uses of information and communications technology (ICT) to promote health in low-income countries.
Dr. Cheng holds a Ph.D. in psychology from University of California, Los Angeles and a B.S. in psychology from Westmont College. She is co-Principal Investigator of a project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to develop and evaluate a mobile phone-based application that monitors the health of preterm infants and their caregivers. She is also co-Investigator of several Department of Defense grants to improve health for HIV patients in sub-Saharan Africa. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Charles Drew University and a Visiting Professor in the School of Informatics at University of California, Irvine.
You can search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed service for publications by Karen Cheng, PhD.
Allison Fish, Ph.D., J.D.
Dr. Fish's research interests lie at the intersection of medical informatics, cultural anthropology, and socio-legal studies. Much of her recent work focuses on how medical knowledge and expertise are managed through legal forms and digital technologies. She is particularly interested in how these factors can be structured to facilitate increased access to medical care for underserved populations in culturally appropriate ways.
Dr. Fish holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Irvine with an emphasis in the anthropologies of medicine, science, and technology. Prior to her doctoral work she received a J.D. and M.P.A. from the University of Arizona. Dr. Fish's dissertation is an ethnographic examination of the events surrounding the creation of a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library in India, a state-sponsored initiative that aims to document the five classical systems of South Asian traditional medicine. As a postdoctoral fellow at Charles Drew she conducted research on the use of telemedicine to increase the access of urban safety net patients to specialty ophthalmological care. Dr. Fish is currently an Assistant Professor at Ohio State University.
You can search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed service for publications by Allison Fish, PhD.
Sheba George, Ph.D.
Dr.George's research interests include using theories and methods grounded in a sociotechnical approach to support the implementation of health information technology (HIT) as well as to evaluate organizational and provider readiness and urban populations' willingness to utilize these HIT solutions.
Dr. George holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley with an emphasis in the study of race and ethnic relations, gender, immigration and qualitative methods. She is the published author of two books by the University of California Press, including her dissertation thesis. She has completed an NIMH postdoctoral fellowship from UCLA and served as a consultant for Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research on informatics related research exploring the impact of the introduction of computers and the electronic medical record in the exam room on the doctor-patient interaction. A co-authored paper resulting from this project published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine was selected as an editor's pick for the "Best of JGIM" in 2006. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Charles Drew University.
You can search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed service for publications by Sheba George, PhD.
Ramarao Ilapakurthi
Mr. Ramarao is a Senior Systems Administrator who designs, maintains and monitors dedicated networks between community research sites (community clinics, etc.) and Charles Drew University for telemedicine, chronic disease registry, and electronic digital document image control projects. He also liaises with the CDU Information Systems Department, and manages registry projects for the Research Centers at CDU to address special support/system needs of the research faculty.
Mr. Ramarao holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, a Masters degree in Computer Applications and the following certifications: MCSE, CCNA, Project Management Professional certified (PMP) in Systems Management and Systems Engineering. Before moving to Charles Drew University he worked for UNISYS and Bank of the West on various software development projects in the lead role.
Sukrit Mukherjee, M.S., M.S.E
Mr. Sukrit Mukherjee is responsible for research and development of new research software or extensive software revisions for the products that are used for biomedical research in general or for clinical translational research in particular across the entire research operations within the university. He defines product requirements and creates high-level architectural specifications, ensuring feasibility, functionality, and integration with existing systems/platforms. He designs, modifies, develops, writes and implements software programming applications/operating systems. He also coordinates team works. Mr. Mukherjee has extensive expertise in a variety of the field's concepts, practices, and procedures related to software reseach and development that are applicable to clinical research. He also provides consultation on complex projects and guides a team of developers through the project to completion.He is also the architect and lead developer for CDU's AXIS web portal ( http://axis.cdrewu.edu ), biobanking information system and chronic disease registry (CEDRIC) projects. He is the architect and administrator for CDU's adaptation of Profiles RNS called CDU Profiles ( http://profiles.cdrewu.edu ) and CDU version of REDcap ( http://redcap.cdrewu.edu ). He is also the architect and developer of the DREAMS system (CDU Data Retrieval & manipulation system) [ http://dreams.cdrewu.edu ] and OSHPD Patient Data Analysis System. Apart from these he provides data source integration and query programming and optimization for university researchers and assists CDU researchers in performing advanced and statistical analysis on large datasets. He also heads the management activities for database performance tuning, disaster and emergency planning, recovery and server maintenance. Mr. Mukherjee has experience in programming and managing application and database environments for both Unix and Windows platforms.
As an instructor and researcher in the College of Medicine, Mr. Mukherjee' s research interest includes Translational Bioinformatics, Clinical Research Informatics and Public Health Informatics. Mr. Mukherjee holds a B.S. degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering and a M.S. degree in Computer Science & Engineering and M.S. in Engineering degree in Software Engineering from California State University. His certifications include: MCP in Software Development and Systems Engineering, MCSE, MCSD and also certifications in C++, Java, and .Net. Before moving to Charles Drew University he worked on various software development projects in the lead role, including the Department of Military and Veteran's Affairs' State Active Duty Project. Mr. Mukherjee currently serves as a Senior Software Engineer at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science and as an Instructor at the College of Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.
Omolola Ogunyemi, Ph.D., Director
Dr. Ogunyemi's research interests include computerized medical decision support, reasoning under uncertainty, 3D graphics and visualization, and machine learning. Her current research focuses on developing and evaluating novel computerized decision support systems for different biomedical domains, including trauma, breast cancer, diabetes, depression, chronic kidney disease, and HIV. She has been principal investigator on a National Library of Medicine-funded study of computerized decision support for penetrating trauma, and on a National Cancer Institute-funded study of individualized breast cancer risk prediction using Bayesian networks. She is currently director of the biomedical informatics function for CDU's Accelerating eXcellence In translational Science (AXIS) grant and a co-chair of the UCLA CTSI's biomedical informatics program. The CTSI is a joint translational science institute involving UCLA, CDU, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Dr. Ogunyemi holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Barnard College, Columbia University and an M.S.E, and Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Before moving to Charles Drew University to become the Director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics, Dr. Ogunyemi was biomedical informatics faculty in the Department of Radiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School from 1999 until 2007. She was also a member of the affiliated faculty in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology from 2003 until 2007. She has taught graduate level biomedical informatics courses in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, at UCLA, and short courses on informatics at the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa. She served on the National Library of Medicine's Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee study section from 2003-2007, is currently on the National Library of Medicine's Literature Selection and Technical Review Committee (2010-2014) and is an editorial board member of the journal Computers in Biology and Medicine.
You can search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed service for publications by Omolola Ogunyemi, PhD.
Paul Robinson, Ph.D.
Dr. Robinson's research areas include geographical information science (GISc), urban geography, and applications of geographical information systems and related spatial technologies in health disparities research.
Dr. Robinson holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Southern California (2001), a Masters in geography from the University of South Florida (1993) and Bachelors in geography from Virginia Tech (1989). He is director of Charles Drew University's Medical GIS laboratory. He was principal investigator on a pilot project from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He has an R03 award from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to study the relationship between neighborhood structure and cardiovascular disease. He is currently an Assistant Professor at both Charles Drew University and UCLA.
You can search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed service for publications by Paul Robinson, PhD.
Daniel Ryan
Mr. Ryan maintains the Charles Drew Medical GIS Laboratory database archive and is responsible for the majority of technical responsibilities, including acquisition of new datasets, and the development of materials for publication. He works closely with Dr. Robinson and other faculty and staff on the technical aspects of linking novel GIS datasets to existing health related large databases and in the identification of geographic areas and communities for "rapid" and other survey research.
Daniel Ryan received his B.A. in Geography from California State University, Long Beach in 2001. He has worked with GIS in both the private and public sectors before joining Charles Drew University in December 2006.
