Faculty, Students, and Staff
Faculty
Meet the Feinberg School of Medicine faculty affiliated with Center for Health Information Partnerships (CHIP).
Abel Kho, MD, MS, FACMI
Director of CHIP
Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine
Abel is Director of CHIP and Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics Division) and Preventive Medicine (Health and Biomedical Informatics Division) in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. He develops relationships and tools to bring together health data at the local, regional, and national level to improve care. Abel is the principal investigator and/or informatics lead within several national networks funded by AHRQ, CDC, and CMS. He has an active primary care practice, which helps inform the clinical relevance of his research.
View Abel’s NU Faculty Profile for publications, news, and more.
Twitter: @AbelKho
Learn MoreAbel Kho, MD, MS, FACMI
Director of CHIP
Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine
Abel Kho, MD, MS, FACMI, is Tenured Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and Director of the Center for Health Information Partnerships (CHIP) within the Institute for Public Health and Medicine. His work focuses on bringing people and data together for population, translational, and quality improvement research.
Abel is the Principal Investigator (PI) for several multi-institutional collaborative projects. He helped found CAPriCORN, a patient-centered outcomes and research network. He is the PI along with Patricia Franklin for the AHRQ/PCORI funded K12 training award, A Chicago Center of Excellence in Learning Health Systems Research Training (ACCELERAT), which builds upon CAPriCORN to train the next generation of leaders in learning health systems research. Abel is PI with Bernard Black for a Natural Experiment for Translation in Diabetes, which aims to determine the effects of Medicaid expansion on diabetes diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes across eight states in a partnership between CAPriCORN and the Greater Plains Collaborative.
Abel is Principal Investigator for the AHRQ-funded Healthy Hearts in the Heartland consortium, which aims to test the capacity of primary care practices in the Midwest to improve the ABCS of cardiovascular disease prevention: Aspirin in high-risk individuals, Blood pressure control, Cholesterol management, and Smoking cessation. Along with Theresa Walunas, he is Principal Investigator for the AHRQ-funded INSPIRE (Intervention in Small Primary Care Practices to Implement Reduction in Unhealthy Alcohol Use) project, which supports and evaluates the implementation of screening and treatment interventions for patients with unhealthy alcohol use. He also serves as the site lead for Illinois’ involvement in the CMS-sponsored Great Lakes Practice Transformation Network. As a member of the All of Us Research Program Data and Research Center, Abel is focused on ensuring the highest completeness and quality of EHR data for all participants with a focus on use of record linkage methods.
Twitter: @AbelKho
View Abel’s NU Faculty Profile for publications, news, and more.
Theresa Walunas, PhD, FAMIA
Associate Director of CHIP
Associate Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics), Microbiology-Immunology and Preventive Medicine (Health and Biomedical Informatics)
Theresa’s background is in immunology and computer science with an interest in bridging the gap between the bedside and the bench. She has interests in translational immunology and precision medicine with the goal of using health record data to improve health for people with autoimmune disease. Given the importance of having high-quality information and improving health care for people with immunological conditions, she has also focused on developing teams and projects that help providers more effectively use electronic health record systems and support data-driven care and quality improvement.
Key Projects: IMMUNE, IRAE-ID, Lupus R21, INSPIRE Twitter: @TheresaWalunas
View Theresa’s NU Faculty Profile for publications, news, and more.
Check back shortly for more information on Theresa Walunas, PhD, FAMIA.
Faraz Ahmad, MD, MS
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Cardiology Division, Feinberg School of Medicine, and Northwestern Medicine Site Principal Investigator for Chicago Area Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Network (CAPriCORN)
Faraz is a practicing heart failure cardiologist who cares for patients across the spectrum of heart failure.
Faraz's research interests are in the application data science, machine learning, and digital health technologies to improve quality of care and patient-centered outcomes for patients with heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases. His research program includes the development, implementation, and scaling of digital health solutions to enable learning health systems for continuous quality improvement and pragmatic research studies. His work has received support from multiple organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the Heart Failure Society of America, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Key Project: CAPriCORN. Twitter: @FarazA_MD
View Faraz’s NU Faculty Profile for publications, news, and more.
Check back shortly for more information on Faraz Ahmad, MD, MS.
Al'ona Furmanchuk, PhD
Research Assistant Professor of Medicine, General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics Division, Feinberg School of Medicine
Al'ona specializes in the evaluation of health care policies, artificial intelligence methods, alignment of clinical ontologies, linking health information to external data sources. She applies her interdisciplinary expertise to successful monitoring and understanding of population health. Her ongoing research interests are focused on the prediction of health outcomes and assessing aspects of patient care in the primary care and trauma centers.
Key Projects: Next-D, All of Us, IRAE-ID, STS
View Al’ona’s NU Faculty Profile for publications, news, and more.
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David Liebovitz, MD, FAMIA, FACP
Associate Vice-chair, Department of Medicine, and Associate Professor of Medicine, General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics Division, Feinberg School of Medicine
David is an associate professor and associate vice chair for the Department of Medicine in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. His work includes application of informatics principles across specialty divisions to optimize clinical efficiency, enhance patient safety, and support research and education. David also conducts research on informatics topics and teaches on a variety of informatics topics. He has an active internal medicine practice and he enjoys running by the lake, weather permitting.
Twitter: @david126
View David’s NU Faculty Profile for publications, news, and more.
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Yuan Luo, PhD
Chief AI Scientist at Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, and Associate Professor, Preventive Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine
Yuan's research interests include machine learning, natural language processing, time series analysis, computational phenotyping and integrative genomics, with a focus on medical applications. His PhD Thesis was awarded the inaugural Doctoral Dissertation Award Honorable Mention by American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) in 2017. He won the first prize at NLP Doctoral Consortium in 2013 AMIA Annual Symposium. He is currently associate editor with JHIR, an editor with JBI, Plos One and JAMIA Open and was on the Student Editorial Board for JAMIA. He co-chairs eMERGE NLP WG, serves on AMIA Membership and Outreach Committee, and Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute Research/Innovation and Education Committee. He is a Fellow of AMIA.
Key Projects: PhEMA, eMERGE, CTSA. Twitter: @yuanhypnosluo
View Yuan’s NU Faculty Profile for publications, news, and more.
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Students, Post Docs, and Fellows
Click on the names below to get to know our student research assistants.
Noah Forrest
MD-PhD Student, Doctoral Research Assistant
Primary Mentor:
Theresa L. Walunas, PhD
Check back shortly for more information on Noah Forrest.
Steven Tran
MD-PhD Student, Doctoral Research Assistant
Primary Mentor:
Abel N. Kho, MD
Check back shortly for more information on Steven Tran.
Yuyang Yang
MD-PhD Student, Doctoral Research Assistant
Primary Mentor:
David M. Liebovitz, MD
Check back shortly for more information on Yuyang Yang.
Jiancheng Ye
PhD Student, Doctoral Research Assistant
Jiancheng Ye
PhD Student, Doctoral Research Assistant
Jiancheng received biomedical engineering training from Tsinghua University in China and Health Informatics training from Johns Hopkins University. He has experience in the design and implementation of medical devices, as well as industry and data analysis. His PhD research focuses on the intersection of informatics, health quality, and patient safety. He enjoys interdisciplinary research for the opportunity to use technology to combine engineering and medicine, thereby improving people’s health and quality of life.
Staff
Click on the names below to get to know our center’s staff.
Jennifer Bannon
Practice Facilitation Lead
Jennifer Bannon
Practice Facilitation Lead
Jennifer Bannon got her start in Nursing Informatics in the hospital setting where she acted as the Nursing Team Lead on an electronic health record (EHR) implementation at a small community hospital in 2002. Her education includes a B.S. in Nursing and an M.S. in Health Informatics. Prior to working in informatics, Jennifer worked in nursing in multiple settings including, inpatient, outpatient and home health. Other healthcare experiences include quality improvement, education and case management.
Jennifer has provided Practice Facilitation expertise in the AHRQ Evidence Now study, Healthy Hearts in the Heartland (H3), which focused on improving cardiac health outcomes in the Midwest region, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative study, Great Lakes Practice Transformation Network (GLPTN). Her facilitation talents include skills in workflow assessment, team-based care, change management, and learning collaboration.
Anh Hien Chung
Data Analyst, CAPriCORN
Anh Hien Chung
Data Analyst, CAPriCORN
Anh Hien Chung is a data analyst for CAPriCORN. In addition to working on the CAPriCORN Data Team, Anh Hien is a Database Systems Engineer at Feinberg in the Rheumatology Division. She has been with the Division for more than 20 years and has aided numerous investigators in creating and maintaining ongoing registry and research databases. Anh lives in Chicago with her husband and three sons.
Lacey Gleason
Program Administrator and Research Operations Lead
Lacey Gleason
Program Administrator and Research Operations Lead
Lacey Gleason, MSPH, is a Program Administrator at CHIP with experience in health services research, health care quality, and practice improvement. Prior to joining CHIP, Lacey earned a Master of Science in Public Health in Health Policy and Health Services Research from Emory University and a Bachelor of Arts in biology from Columbia University. Lacey has previously worked on research, quality improvement, and strategic planning projects at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Penn Medicine. She is also an AmeriCorps alumna who served in the Community HealthCorps.
Jennifer Heinrich
Research Project Manager and CHIP Center Administrator
Jennifer Heinrich
Research Project Manager and CHIP Center Administrator
Jennifer Heinrich, MHA, is a Research Project Manager and CHIP’s Center Administrator. She currently works as a project manager for the NHLBI funded research project Community Intervention to Reduce CardiovascuLar Disease in Chicago (CIRCL-Chicago), which focuses on strategies used to support adoption, implementation with fidelity, and sustainability of the Kaiser bundle within an inner-city community in Chicago with a high burden of hypertension. She also works on the research program INSPIRE and has previously provided assistance and outreach for the Illinois Medicaid and Medicare quality incentive payment programs. Prior to joining CHIP, she worked as a practice facilitator on projects including the CMS Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPi) and the Healthy Hearts in the Heartland (H3) research program at Telligen, a CMS Quality Innovation Network (QIN). She earned a Master of Health Administration degree from Governors State University.
Projects: CIRCL-Chicago, INSPIRE
Mercedes Nodal
Senior Research Study Coordinator
Mercedes Nodal
Senior Research Study Coordinator
Mercedes Nodal is a Sr. Research Study Coordinator at CHIP. She currently works on the ADAPTABLE Study, INSPIRE, and the Quality Payment Program of Illinois. She has been working at Northwestern University since 2016. Before joining NU, Mercedes worked at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) on several research studies as a bilingual research assistant. With more than 10 years of experience as a community outreach coordinator, Mercedes collaborated with several nonprofit organizations, political and religious groups, hospitals, and schools to raise health awareness and outreach in the Latino community.
Projects: ADAPTABLE, INSPIRE, Quality Payment Program
Andrea VanderLaan
Program Coordinator
Andrea VanderLaan
Program Coordinator
Andrea VanderLaan currently supports the faculty and staff at CHIP. Her main responsibilities include financial processing, project management, and assisting with administrative tasks with a focus on CAPriCORN and the Recharge Center. Andrea also provides administrative support for the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM).
Prior to joining CHIP, she attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology.
Ricky Watson Jr.
Research Project Manager
Ricky Watson Jr.
Research Project Manager
Ricky Watson Jr. is a research project manager with a degree in Finance. Ricky joined CHIP with over 10 years of community engagement experience. He is currently working on the CIRCL-Chicago project. Prior to joining CHIP, he worked with a credit company that helped individuals rebuild their credit to a satisfactory status to proceed with purchasing homes. He also worked several years with not-for-profit companies gaining experience with database management, project management, team building and community engagement.
Eva Winckler
Senior Program Administrator
Eva Winckler
Senior Program Administrator
Eva Winckler, MPH, has a background in marketing, communications and public health. In her role as Senior Program Manager for CHIP and the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM), she oversees communications strategy for the center and institute. Eva originally joined the team as part of the Chicago Health IT Regional Extension Center (CHITREC) before CHIP was established. Prior to joining CHITREC, Eva gained experience building capacity for community-academic research teams and also managing communications for a non-profit breast cancer support organization. She earned a Master of Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago and holds an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University.