We welcome you to join us for GHI’s next Global Health Tuesday Webinar on Tuesday, March 19, from 9-10am (CST), when UW–Madison Global Health Institute Director Jorge Osorio hosts the timely conversation on advancing global health with AI.
Panelists include: Tom Erickson, Founding Director, School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences, and Executive Associate Dean of Strategy and Innovation, College of Letters & Science, UW-Madison; Juan Caicedo, Assistant Professor, Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, UW-Madison, and Biomedical Imaging Investigator, Morgridge Institute for Research; and Rob Nowak, Keith and Jane Morgan Nosbusch Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Grace Wahba Professor of Data Science, UW-Madison.
The session was recorded and is available for viewing here.
Meet the Director:
GHI Director Jorge Osorio, DVM, Ph.D., M.S., is a professor in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine. Osorio has had a lengthy career in medical sciences, including virology, field epidemiological studies, vaccinology, antivirals and vector control programs. He is also the co-director of a Colombia-Wisconsin One Health Consortium, a joint effort between the University of Wisconsin and Universidad Nacional in Colombia that is studying emerging diseases and one-health issues. Osorio recently founded VaxThera, a Colombian-based company that will produce vaccines and biologicals for Colombia and the region. He was also a co-founder and chief Scientific officer of Inviragen, a biotechnology company that developed a novel chimeric tetravalent dengue vaccine that recently completed successfully Phase 3 clinical trials. He also developed vaccines against chikungunya, influenza, rabies, plague and many other emerging infectious diseases.
Osorio also has served as vice president of Research and vice president of Government Affairs for the Vaccine Business Division of Takeda Pharmaceuticals. His industry career also included positions at Heska Corporation (Ft. Collins, Colorado), Merial LTD (Athens, Georgia), and Chiron-Powderject Vaccines (Madison, Wisconsin). He has more than 30 years of research and industry experience with more than 130 scientific publications in international journals and 32 patents.
Meet the Moderator:
Tom Erickson is the founding director of the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences (CDIS) and the executive associate dean of strategy and innovation for the College of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
In addition to serving on UW–Madison Chancellor Emerita Rebecca Blank’s advisory council, Tom co-chaired a working group on the future of computing at the university in 2018. He co-authored the group’s report “Wisconsin in the Information Age.” This led to the formation of CDIS in 2019, which brought together the top ranked departments of Computer Sciences, Statistics and the Information School.
Tom serves on the boards of emerging tech companies in North America and Europe in the areas of data science, analytics, and digital health.
Before returning to his alma mater, Tom was a founding director and CEO of Acquia, a Boston-based software company that he grew from founding to $175M in revenue and 800 employees. A majority share of Acquia was acquired in 2019 by Vista Equity Partners for more than $1B. In 2012, Deloitte named Acquia the fastest-growing private software company in the USA.
During his 40-year career, Tom has also served in several executive roles in software companies, including Teleatlas (TomTom), Systinet (Mercury Interactive/HP), webMethods (Software AG), Baan (Infor), and MRO Software (IBM).
Tom is passionate about opportunity, equality, and education. He loves the outdoors and hates room service. A native of western Wisconsin, he’s lived in Australia, England, and France. He enjoys photography and cooking when he is not developing his mindfulness practice. Tom is the proud father of two young men.
A third-generation Wisconsin Badger, Tom earned a bachelor’s of science degree in electrical and computer engineering with honors from UW–Madison in 1980.
Meet the Panelists:
Juan Caicedo, PhD, is an assistant professor of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at UW-Madison as well as a Biomedical Imaging Investigator at the Morgridge Institute for Research
His lab’s work is focused on creating computational models of phenotypic variation using microscopy imaging and machine learning. Microscopy imaging is the best strategy to observe the complexity of cellular structures and tissue organization, and to capture complex phenotypes in space and time. They use machine learning to model the biological information captured in microscopy images and to enable quantitative inference with complex phenotypes. These computational models enable them to study the impact of diseases and the effects of treatments at the cellular level, bringing precision and sensitivity to biological research.
Robert Nowak, PhD, is the Grace Wahba Professor of Data Science and Keith and Jane Nosbusch Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on signal processing, machine learning, optimization, and statistics.
Nowak worked at GE Healthcare for 5 summers as an intern, spending the last two years doing research in the Applied Sciences Lab.