2024 Population Health Innovation Summit

Margarida Barroso is a Professor at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, Albany Medical College (AMC) in Albany, New York. Dr. Barroso is also the Director of the AMC Imaging Core Facility and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. She received her Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Lisbon/Gulbenkian Institute of Sciences in Portugal and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University. Dr. Barroso is a renowned expert in Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) imaging with two issued patents on FRET imaging technology. She is a former President of the Histochemical Society and currently serves as a council member of the International Federation of Societies for Histochemistry and Cytochemistry. Dr. Barroso’s diverse expertise integrates basic cell biology with methodological advances in imaging technology to position her research group as a major force in the visualization, quantitation, and optimization of drug delivery into cancer cells using receptor-targeted approaches. She is currently funded by a NY state Rowley breast cancer research grant and several NIH grants, including a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Informatics Technology Cancer Research (ITCR) to study the application of artificial intelligence to classify metastatic cancer cells using subcellular features. Recently, she has been nominated as an associated member of the NCI Cancer Cell Biology Imaging Research network. 

As Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with the Capital Region Chamber, Jason Benitez assists businesses and organizations in the Capital Region and beyond in embarking on and advancing their DEI journeys. Mr. Benitez also works to further the Chamber’s strategic mission relevant to DEI. He previously worked for 15+ years in higher education at the University at Albany, SUNY Schenectady, and Union College, where he served as Associate Dean of Diversity and Inclusion. He serves on the national board of directors and is chair of the DEI sub-division for the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives and is a board trustee for the Northeastern, NY, chapter of the Make a Wish foundation. Mr. Benitez holds a bachelor’s, master’s, and Certificate of Advanced Study from the University at Albany. He lives in Slingerlands, NY, with his wife and two children.

Rumi Chunara’s research focuses on developing computational and statistical approaches to use data holistically across healthcare, social, environmental and policy factors, to improve population-level public health. At NYU, Dr. Chunara also directs the Center for Health Data Science. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Instructor at HealthMap and the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program at Harvard Medical School. She completed her Ph.D. at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and BSc at Caltech. She has received awards from the National Science Foundation CAREER program, Facebook Research, and Gates Foundation Grand Challenges. In addition, she was recognized by MIT Technology Review as a “Top 35 Innovators Under 35” and received the Max Planck Sabbatical Award. 

Josh Klemm was appointed as the Chief Information Officer of the New York State Thruway Authority in October 2021. He previously served in a variety of positions in his 20-year information technology career, including 14 years with the State of New York. Mr. Klemm served as Chief Information Security Officer and Director of the Bureau of Systems and Informatics at the New York State Department of Health, where his team played a critical role in developing the systems and reports for the State’s COVID-19 response, and ran the all payer database, SPARCS, provider directory, and master data management systems. Mr. Klemm also held positions with the AIDS Institute and Department of Labor. He received his bachelor of arts and a master’s of science from the University at Albany, where he serves as an adjunct lecturer in Informatics with the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity.

David Schaeffer has over 17 years of government auditing experience with the Office of the New York State Comptroller’s Division of State Government Accountability (SGA), covering New York City agencies and the New York State Medicaid program. Currently, Mr. Schaeffer leads SGA’s new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Unit auditing AI and emerging technology resulting in one of the first audits on AI performed by state auditors, which assessed NYC’s AI Governance. Mr. Schaeffer manages multiple audit teams, which use advanced data analytic skills to research and audit, and is a founding member of the Data Consult Team, which is an internal resource for audit teams to help identify data sets and methodologies to assist in their audits and improved data literacy division wide. Prior to working for SGA, Mr. Schaeffer studied Political Science and Public Policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the State University of New York, University at Albany and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2006.

Jameson Toole has more than 13 years of experience building novel machine learning and applying artificial intelligence to solve real-world problems. He is the cofounder and former CTO of Fritz AI, a Boston-based startup. Dr. Toole holds a Ph.D. and MSc from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds undergraduate degrees in physics, economics, and applied mathematics from the University of Michigan.

Fei Wang is currently a tenured Professor of Population Health Sciences and Emergency Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. His research interest is machine learning and artificial intelligence in biomedicine. He is the Founding Director of the WCM Institute of AI for Digital Health. Dr. Wang has published on major AI venues including NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, and KDD, as well as major medical venues including Nature Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and JAMA Internal Medicine. Dr. Wang is an elected fellow of American Medical Informatics Association, American College of Medical Informatics, and International Academy of Health Sciences and Informatics, and a distinguished member of Association for Computing Machinery. Dr. Wang’s research has been extensively funded by federal agencies including National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Office of Naval Research, private foundations including the Michael J. Fox Foundation and American Heart Association, as well as industries such as Amazon, Google, Boehringer Ingelheim, Regeneron, and Sanofi.