Current Team

Li Zhou, MD, PhD, FACMI, FIAHSI, FAMIA

Li is a Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She earned her PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University. Throughout her career, her research has focused on various subfields of AI and its applications in medicine. These areas include natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, knowledge representation, and clinical decision support. She has developed technological innovations in NLP and machine learning that facilitate rapid processing and data mining of clinical documentation, enhancing decision-making and patient safety. Her research has also concentrated on allergy information documentation, management, and drug-allergy decision support within EHR systems. Dr. Zhou was a Founding Member of the Exam Committee for the ABMS Board Certification Examination in Clinical Informatics and served on the committee for over 10 years. She is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Medical Informatics (IJMI), the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM), and BMJ Health & Care Informatics. She serves as a Board Director of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). She is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) and of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI). In her free time, she enjoys traveling with her family to discover the world. She also likes hiking and swimming.

Suzanne Blackley, MA

Suzanne is an Applications Analyst in the Clinical and Quality Analysis department at MGB. She has implemented NLP and information extraction solutions across a wide range of clinical domains. She is currently involved the development of an allergy reconciliation module integrated with the MGB electronic health record system as well as a rule- and machine learning-based classifier for identifying patients experiencing psychosis. She received an MA in computational linguistics from Brandeis University in 2016, and a BA in linguistics and BS in brain cognitive sciences from the University of Rochester in 2014. In addition to the above, she is also interested in the use of NLP for the identification and reduction of healthcare disparities. In her free time, she enjoys reading, making and looking at art, and being outdoors.

Xinsong Du, PhD

Xinsong is a research fellow affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. With extensive experience collaborating within interdisciplinary teams, he has undertaken a diverse array of biomedical informatics research projects. His current focus lies in the innovative application of state-of-the-art AI, machine learning, and natural language processing methodologies to tackle contemporary challenges in the field of biomedicine. Prior to his current role, he received his PhD in Biomedical Informatics and an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, both from the University of Florida, complemented by a BE in Electrical Engineering from Shandong University. During leisure moments, he likes ping-pong and karaoke.

Hao Guan, PhD

Hao is a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, specializing in natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), and multimodal AI. His research focuses on applying these technologies to clinical decision support systems, electronic health records, and medical imaging. Prior to joining the team, Hao earned his PhD in Computer Science from Fudan University and worked as a research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Outside of his research, he enjoys reading, playing chess, guitar, and ping-pong.

Joseph Plasek, PhD

Joseph is a health data scientist and clinical informatician with a focus on applying natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning, and dynamic systems theory techniques to medicine. He began his career here a decade ago as a research assistant building MTERMS 1.0, stepped back a bit to gain additional training and real-world industry experience, and has returned full time as a postdoctoral research fellow. He received his PhD in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Utah, and a MS in Health Informatics and BS in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. Joseph is a member of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) editorial board. Pre-COVID-19, he could often be found on the dance floor dancing West Coast Swing, East Coast Swing, Zouk, or Ballroom.

Yiming Li, PhD

Yiming Li is a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, specializing in natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs) for biomedical applications. His research focuses on developing and applying AI, machine learning, and NLP techniques to address critical challenges in biomedicine, such as data analysis, information extraction, and clinical decision support. Yiming earned his doctorate in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, a master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California, and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Manchester. In his free time, he enjoys music, reading, and watching TV.

John Lian

John is a research assistant working with the team on the Bilingualism and Cognitive Resilience project. He received a BS in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is a current student at Albany Medical College. In his free time, John enjoys writing articles for Wikipedia and hiking with his dog Mango.

John Novoa-Laurentiev, MS

John is a computational linguist currently doing work in natural language processing (NLP) for a number of MTERMS team research projects, as well as various collaborative projects with other research teams across Mass General Brigham requiring NLP expertise. John earned his BS in mathematics with a minor in computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2012 and spent several years working in research administration at Boston Children’s Hospital before receiving his MS in computational linguistics at Brandeis University in 2020. In his free time, John enjoys traveling, playing video games, and studying new languages.

Foster (Fiji) Goss, DO, FACEP, MMSc

Fiji is an Emergency physician at University of Colorado Health. He was a research fellow in biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School. He is interested in patient safety, clinical informatics, care-coordination/transitions in care, natural language processing and electronic health records, allergy modeling and information. His research focuses on both decision analysis and quality of care, as it relates to patient safety, communication and coordination of care

Frank Chang, MSE

Frank is a Senior Software Engineer in the Clinical and Quality Analysis department at MGB. He holds an MSE degree in Software Engineering. Frank has more than twenty years of experience in web/database development and software service implementation. He has been involved in diverse research and development projects in clinical informatics, Patient Safety and EHR design and development. Frank coauthored numerous research articles published in JAMA, Archives of Internal Medicine, JAMIA, JBI and other leading journals and conference proceedings in the field of clinical informatics. Frank’s current areas of interest include natural language processing, standard medical terminology, mobile computing, and machine learning technology for the ambulatory electronic medical record systems.

Yining Hua, MS

Ning is a part-time Research Assistant for the team. She is interested in AI, natural language processing and decision support. Ning is currently a PhD student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She received her masters degree in biomedical informatics from Harvard Medical School. During her undergraduate time at Smith College and Harvard University, she studied computer science and physics. In her spare time, she enjoys the outdoors, psychedelic rock, and brutalist architecture.

Kenneth Lai

Kenneth is a computational linguist working on the application of natural language processing methods to information extraction from medical text. He earned his bachelor’s degree in linguistics and chemistry at Dartmouth College and his master’s degree in computational linguistics at Brandeis University. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree in computational linguistics at Brandeis University. His interests also include using novel machine learning methods to discover new knowledge from large data sets. In his free time, Ken likes hiking, playing video games, and cuddling with his stuffed animals.

Liqin Wang, PhD

Liqin is an assistant professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She has research interests in data mining of large clinical and biomedical literature datasets, clinical natural language processing, biomedical ontologies, and clinical decision supports. She works closely with physicians and pharmacists towards improving patient outcome in areas of chronic diseases, palliative care, and drug safety. Liqin was a research fellow at the MTERMS lab. Before joining the team, she earned a PhD in Biomedical Informatics from University of Utah, an MS in Biomedical Engineering from Zhejiang University, and a BE in Electromechanical Engineering from Xidian University. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, reading, and cooking.

Sheril Varghese

Sheril Varghese is a part-time research assistant for the team. She is currently a medical student at Columbia University. She has been primarily working on projects related to improving allergy documentation in EHRs, clinical decision support, and severe cutaneous adverse reactions. She received a BA in Public Health from Brown University in 2021. In her free time, she enjoys going on runs, baking desserts, and exploring different parts of Boston.