Albert M. Lai, PhD, FACMI, FAMIA

A pioneer in the field of biomedical informatics, Albert M. Lai, PhD, is the chief research information officer (CRIO) for Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he is also the deputy director of the Institute for Informatics, Data Science and Biostatistics (I2DB), a professor of medicine in the Division of General Medical Sciences, and a professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

He was most recently tapped to become deputy faculty lead for WashU Digital Transformation, a product of WashU’s new university-wide strategic plan, and its new Digital Intelligence and Innovation (DI2) Accelerator. This role has included empowering faculty, staff and students to use cutting-edge generative AI tools both rapidly and responsibly by standing up a secure WashU ChatGPT sandbox for use with sensitive clinical, student and operational data.

In his role as the medical school’s CRIO, he leads School of Medicine data warehousing and informatics core services, which provide data brokerage and other resources that are accelerating the speed of discovery and innovation for researchers across the institution and beyond. Dr. Lai specializes in the development of research informatics infrastructure and is well-recognized in the fields of clinical research informatics and consumer health informatics. His recent research has focused on the use of large language models and natural language processing to extract complex clinical phenotypes.

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