Advances in Multimodal Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Environmental and Biomedical Data Integration-A Workshop

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The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, and biomedical big data holds promise to transform understanding of human health and disease. Driven by the increasing availability and ability to generate, collect, and analyze environmental and biomedical data along with advanced computing power, AI and machine learning (ML) applications are rapidly developing in research and health. To explore opportunities for leveraging emerging developments in AI and ML to advance multimodal data integration, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a workshop titled Advances in Multimodal Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Environmental and Biomedical Data Integration on June 14-15, 2023. The workshop focused on recent developments in AI and other data-driven approaches to integrate biomedical and environmental health data; the exploration of promising applications in human health and disease; and the ethical, social, and policy implications and challenges of health data collection and integration. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions of the workshop.

Publication information

10 pages · 8.5 x 11 ·
ISBN Ebook: 0-309-70812-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17226/27202

Suggested citation

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Advances in Multimodal Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Environmental and Biomedical Data Integration: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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Carmen J. Marsit

Carmen J. Marsit is Executive Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Research Strategy, Rollins Distinguished Professor of Research, and Professor in the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health and Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University. He leads a multi-disciplinary research program focused on understanding the impacts of the pre- and perinatal environments on maternal and child health, utilizing the tools of genomics, epigenomics, and bioinformatics to uncover mechanisms underlying the impact of the environment on health within epidemiologic studies. Marsit was the recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Biobehavioral Research Award for Innovative New Scientists. His current projects are examining the impacts of maternal structural, psychosocial, and chemical exposures on the transcriptomes and epigenomes of the placenta in populations in the United States and in Thailand. He also has an extensive record of research in the utilization of epigenetic biomarkers to understand the etiology and outcomes of human exposure related cancers. He serves as Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences-funded Emory HERCULES Exposome Research Center and Training Program in the Environmental Health Sciences and Toxicology, and was the founding Director of the Emory-Georgia Clean Air Research and Education Program in the Republic of Georgia. Marsit received a B.S. in biochemistry from Lafayette College and a Ph.D. in biological sciences in public health from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Yao-Yi Chiang

Yao-Yi Chiang is an Associate Professor at the Computer Science & Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota. Previously, he was an Associate Professor (Research) in Spatial Sciences at the University of Southern California. His current research area is spatial artificial intelligence; he develops spatial explicit machine learning and data mining methods to discover useful insights from heterogeneous spatial data, including satellite imagery, scanned historical maps, knowledge graphs, natural language data, time-series data, and transportation data. He was recently a visiting researcher at Google AI and a machine learning consultant at the Spatial Computing Group at Meta. Before graduate school, Chiang worked as a research scientist for Geosemble Technologies and Fetch Technologies in California. Geosemble Technologies was founded on a patent on geospatial data fusion techniques, and he was a co-inventor. He is also the founder of Kartta Foundation, a non-profit organization providing software and services to distill and assemble geographic knowledge for the public good. He is also an Action Editor of GeoInformatica (Springer) and an editorial board member for Transactions in GIS (Wiley). Chiang received a B.S. in information management from the National Taiwan University and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Southern California.

Christopher Duncan

Christopher (Chris) Duncan is a Program Administrator in the Genes, Environment, and Health Branch of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Division of Extramural Research and Training. Duncan leads the development and coordination of extramural programs that leverage data science approaches to address environmental health challenges. In this role, he manages a portfolio of research and resource grants in areas of data science relevant to the field of Environmental Health Sciences (EHS). Additionally, Duncan leads NIEHS implementation efforts for the National Institutes of Health Policy for Data Management and Sharing and he coordinates efforts to make EHS data more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). Prior to his current role, Duncan completed a cross-divisional postdoctoral fellowship in epigenetics with the NIEHS Divisions of Intramural Research, Extramural Research and Training, and the National Toxicology Program. Duncan received a B.S. in chemical engineering and paper science and engineering from North Carolina State University and a Ph.D. in pathology from Duke University.

Anindita Dutta

Anindita Dutta is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Chicago where her addresses some of the most pressing global issues in understanding impacts of ambient and household air pollution on maternal-child health, including chronic non-communicable diseases (hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes), reproductive health and adverse pregnancy outcomes, placental pathology, cord blood hematology, olfaction, pulmonary, cognition and neurobehavior. Dutta has been working in Asia (India, China), North America (United States), and Africa (Nigeria) for over 16 years, leading research on air pollution and intervention strategies, advocating policy measures, undertaking professional outreach related to public health, developing collaborative research partnerships with academic peers, community partners, and government agencies. She received the International Young Scientist Award from China’s National Natural Science Foundation. Dutta received a Ph.D. in [discipline] from Jadavpur University, India and completed postdoctoral training at Peking University, China, and the University of Chicago conference presentations, honors, and awards.

Dokyoon Kim

Dokyoon Kim is an assistant professor of informatics at the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics within the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He has considerable bioinformatics expertise in methods development for data integration using machine learning and other analytic challenges. His research entails the development and application of data integration approach to improve the ability to diagnose, treat, and prevent complex diseases. His primary focus lies in integrating multi-omics data, biological knowledge, imaging data, and clinical data derived from electronic health records (EHR) to better translate discovery into clinical products. His past projects have been both theoretical and applied, and they include developing data integration methods that combine multi-omics data and biological knowledge, predicting clinical outcomes based on interactions between multi-omic features, integrating genomics and imaging data in several phenotypes/diseases, and translational research using EHR-linked biobanks.

Megan W. Latshaw

Megan Latshaw serves as Director of the Master’s Degree Programs in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She also serves as Core Faculty for the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, and Co- Chair of the Johns Hopkins Sustainability Plan Steering Committee. Previously, she served as Chair of the American Public Health Association’s Inter- Sectional Council as well as Chair of their Environment Section. Other positions included leading the Environmental Health programs at both the Association of State & Territorial Health Officials and at the Association of Public Health Laboratories where she directed the launch of the National Biomonitoring Network. Her efforts to translate environmental health science to policy and practice focus on transit equity, environmental justice, climate change, disease clusters, and designing healthy communities. She has received numerous awards including the Collaborative on Health and the Environment’s 20 Pioneers under 40 in Environmental Public Health. Latshaw received a B.A. in biology, an M.H.S. in environmental health and a Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Use of Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions.

Gwen Ellen Ottinger

Gwen Ottinger is Associate Professor at Drexel University in the Department of Politics and the Center for Science, Technology, and Society. They direct the Fair Tech Collective, a research group that uses social science to promote justice in science and technology. They received a an NSF CAREER award and the 2015 Rachel Carson Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science for Refining Expertise: How Responsible Engineers Subvert Environmental Justice Challenges. Ottinger was an ACLS-Burkhardt Fellow and a 2020-2021 Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In 2022, they were the Fulbright Research Chair at the Institute for Science, Society, and Policy at the University of Ottawa. Ottinger is working on a new book, The Science of Repair: How People who Care about Facts Should Work for Social Justice .

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Advances in Multimodal Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Environmental and Biomedical Data Integration-A Workshop

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Advances in Multimodal Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Environmental and Biomedical Data Integration-A Workshop

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Featured publication

Advances in Multimodal Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Environmental and Biomedical Data Integration: Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

Description

Contributors

Committee

Sponsors

Staff

Parent projects

Board on Life Sciences

Standing Committee on the Use of Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions

Major units and sub-units

Contact

Contact us

Provide feedback

More like this

Standing Committee on the Use of Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions

Earth Systems and Resources Program Area

Social and Economic Systems Program Area

Aeronautics, Space, and Astronomy Program Area

Life Sciences and Biotechnology Program Area

Strengthening Southeast Asian Academia and Industry Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Safety and Security - A Workshop

Review of Methods in the Report on Carcinogens Handbook