Sana Syed and Thomas Hartka

Event Details

Sep 27, 2021 | 4:00PM – 5:00PM ET

Location

Zoom

Contact Email

Missed the event? Watch the recording here.

Physician Data Scientists: Wearing Two Hats, The Why and How of Applying Data Science to Medical Research

Speakers: Dr. Sana Syed, Associate Professor, Departments of Pediatrics and Public Health Sciences and Dr. Thomas Hartka, Assistant Professor, Departments of Emergency Medicine and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia

Co-facilitators: Phil Bourne, Founding Dean, the School of Data Science and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Sallie Keller, Distinguished Professor in Biocomplexity and a Division Director at the Biocomplexity Institute

Abstract: As if the achievement of a medical degree wasn’t enough, two UVA doctors embarked on another challenging pursuit: an MS in Data Science. These recent “graduates” from UVA’s School of Data Science will share their experiences as medical doctors and data scientists in this Data Science for the Public Good Distinguished Speaker Series.

Bio: Dr. Sana Syed, MD, MSCR, MSDS is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Public Health Sciences in the School of Medicine and the School of Data Science. The Syed lab’s NIH-funded work has centered around understanding intestinal structure and function using molecular and computational methods with a focus on luminal inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract both here in the US and in global health. She founded and co-directs the multi-disciplinary Gastroenterology Data Science Lab, which aims to build predictive models using novel data science methods to study biomedical big data. Dr. Syed completed her post-graduate training in pediatrics, pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition, and advanced clinical nutrition from Duke, Emory, and Boston Children’s/ Harvard Medical School including a Master’s of Clinical Research (Emory) and Data Science (UVA School of Data Science). She is also deeply committed to diversity, equity, and justice in our community and has led several initiatives for under-represented minorities in STEM (C’ville STEM boxes; iTHRIV iDRIV URM scholar mentoring program; SOAR summer scholars).

Dr. Thomas Hartka, MD, MS is an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Dr. Hartka studied Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, earning his Bachelor's and Masters's Degrees, where he investigated structural optimization using cellular automata on reconfigurable hardware. He attended the University of Virginia School of Medicine and then remained at the University of Virginia to complete his residency in Emergency Medicine. Dr. Hartka then took a position as the Trauma Research Fellow at the Center for Applied Biomechanics under Dr. Mark Sochor. After completing his fellowship, he joined the faculty at the University of Virginia. He recently completed his Master of Data Science through the University of Virginia's online program supported by the integrated Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia (iTHRIV) scholars program. His research focuses on the use of data to improve emergency care for patients injured in motor vehicle collisions.