About Us

The Population Informatics Lab applies informatics, data science, and computational methods to the increasingly large digital traces of people available to advance public health, social science, and population research. We specialize in data science, KDD (Knowledge Discovery and Datamining), data integration, visualization, decision support systems, health informatics, computational social science, and privacy.

Our research is an emerging research area at the intersection of domain science (social, behavioral, economic, and health sciences), computer science, and statistics in which quantitative methods and computational tools are applied to big data about people to answer social science questions. Health informatics is a major subarea focusing on big data about health. We generally consider all research using large data sets where the unit of analysis is a person or groups of people (family, organizations, etc) as being relevant. Some examples are health informatics using hospital records, decision support systems based on administrative data for government agencies, public computational journalism using government data, and behavioral research using purchasing data.

We welcome collaborations with other researchers interested in population informatics, computational social science, computational journalism, and health informatics. Please contact Hye-Chung Kum (kum at tamu dot edu) if you have any questions.

In the News

• TEES awards seed grant funding for Big Data and cybersecurity research
• Vital Records: TAMHSC Newsletter
• Today: TAMU Newsletter
• Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) Newsletter

Faculty

Director

• Hye-Chung Kum : School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management; Department of Computer Science & Engineering; Department of Industrial Systems & Engineering

Texas A&M

School of Public Health

• Robert Ohsfeldt : Texas A&M, Department of Health Policy and Management
• Cason Schmit: Texas A&M, Department of Health Policy and Management
• Alva Ferdinand: Texas A&M, Department of Health Policy and Management
• Insik Min: Texas A&M, Department of Health Policy and Management
• Qi Zheng: Texas A&M, Department of Epidemiology & Statistics
• Dennis Gorman: Texas A&M, Department of Epidemiology & Statistics
• Daikwon Han: Texas A&M, Department of Epidemiology & Statistics

College of Engineering

• Mark Lawley: Texas A&M, Department of Industrial Engineering & Department of Biomedical Engineering

Other

• Michele Weigle : Old Dominion University, Department of Computer Science

Students & Post-Doc

Post-Doc

• Michelle Mellers

Public Health Students

• Theodoros Giannouchos
• Nikita Wagle
• Mohammad Karim
• Kobi Ajayi
• Alumni
• Debra Tan: VA Research Associate
• Yong Choi: PhD program and University of Washington
• Yuxian Du: Postdoc at Bayer

CS Students

• Mahin Ramezani
• Alumni
• Gurudev Ilangovan
• Qinbo Li
• Yumei Li
• Jain Prannay
• Vishwas Siravara
• Johnny Yoon
• Haiwei Chen

Industrial Engineering Students

• Sulki Park
• Alumni
• Pulkit Jain

Texas A&M School Health Science Center, School of Public Health Collaborators

• Joseph Sharkey
• Eva Shipp

Texas A&M Center for Remote Healthcare Technology Collaborators

• Gerard L. Cote: Texas A&M, Department of Industrial Engineering & Department of Biomedical Engineering

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Past Collaborations

Diabetes Health and Wellness Institute (DHWI) Collaborators

• Charles E. Bell, M.D., M.S.

UNC-CH RENCI (Renaissance Computing Institute) Collaborators

• Arcot Rajasekar, chief scientist at RENCI & professor at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS)
• Ketan Mane
• Sharlini Sankaran, executive director, REACH NC/RENCI
• Howard Lander, senior research software developer

UNC-CH Population Center Collaborators: Faculty/Staff

• Barry Popkin (UNC Food Research Group)
• Shu Wen Ng (UNC Food Research Group)

UNC-CH Odum Institute Collaborators: Faculty/Staff

• Thomas W. Carsey
• Jon Crabtree

UNC-CH School of Social Work Collaborators: Faculty/Staff

• Dean Duncan
• Kim Flair
• Joy Stewart
• Jennie Vaughn
• Harlene Gogan
• Cyrette Cotten-Fleming

UNC-CH School of Public Health Collaborators: Faculty/Staff

• Dorthy Cilenti
• Marisa Domino
• Shirley Richards
• Marianne Hillemeier (Pennsylvania State University)
• Tim Whitmire (Center for Health Statistics, NC-DHHS)

Previous Students

CS Students

• Han Wang
• Darshana Pathak (dpathak at cs dot unc dot edu): SAS, Cary
• Ren Bauer (rabauer at email dot unc dot edu): Automated Insights, Durham
• Ian Sang-June Kim (iankim at unc dot edu)
• Gautam Sanka (gausanka at gmail dot com)
• Dennis Given(dgiven at live dot unc dot edu)
• Jordan Reese (jsreese at live dot unc dot edu)
• Zhaoyu Zhang
• Wei Cheng
• Shunping Huang
• Nirup Reddy
• Loreli Evans
• Wilson Lian
• David Brandl

SW students

• Chung-Kwon Lee
• Elizabeth Caplick Weigensberg
• Rachel Buchanan
• Paul Lanier
• Ryan Morgan
• Cheryl Noble
• Jilan Li
• Yeong-Hun Yeo
• Jung-Won Huh

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Population Informatics Lab History

• Fall 2013: Dr. Kum also joined Texas A&M Health Science Center and more connections were made with Texas A&M.  But UNC-CH also have seen more participation as the group matured.
• Spring 2013: Became an inter organization group with Dr. Wells Joining Texas A&M Health Science Center
• Fall 2012: Population Informatics Lab
• Fall 2010: Social Welfare and Health Informatics Group (SWHIG)