Anna Riegel, PhD, VP for Biomedical Graduate Education and Research at Georgetown University Medical Center announced the appointment of Nawar Shara, PhD, as the Chief of AI Applications in Health Data Science (Chief AI) at Georgetown, complementing the recent cross-institutional appointment of Peter McGarvey, PhD, as Scientific Director of AI in Genomic Bioinformatics at MedStar Health Research Institute (MHRI).

These collaborative leadership appointments build on the recent launch of the MedStar – Georgetown Collaborative Center for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Research and Education (AI CoLab) which, in turn, was enabled by ongoing collaboration and investment of our CTSA-supported GHUCCTS to bring together its  Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design (BERD) and Health Informatics (HI) cores via shared leadership to capitalize on their mutual expertise to develop innovative AI directions over recent years.  Indeed, these GHUCCTS collaborations, bringing together colleagues from Howard and Georgetown Universities and MHRI were similarly key to our national roles in the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) program.

These new roles for Drs. Shara and McGarvey focused on AI will be instrumental in: 
Strategic Advising, Partnership Development, Curriculum Development, Research and Innovation, and Representation and Advocacy—all to advance and shape the discourse on applying AI to multiple areas in healthcare.

Congratulations to Drs. Shara and McGarvey on these new roles that will build on the collaborations they successfully established within and across our CTSA-supported GHUCCTS Hub.