Workforce Diversity, Education Informatics, and AI: Challenges, Innovation, and Future Directions

Toufeeq Ahmed Syed, PhD, MS

Associate Professor

Assistant Dean of Education Informatics

McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics

McGovern Medical School

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

9/22/2023

11am – 12pm CST

Location: SP1 Room 530

506 Dolorosa St, San Antonio, TX 78204

Zoom: https://utsa.zoom.us/j/91049981814

In this talk, Dr. Toufeeq Syed will discuss the role AI and Informatics can play in supporting life-long self-directed learners, increasing researcher diversity, creating national mentoring networks, and reducing health disparities. Dr. Ahmed co-leads National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN). The goal of NRMN is to increase the diversity of the biomedical workforce necessary to meet the projected needs by providing mentorship and networking activities, as well as serve as a national resource for best practices in mentoring and networking. For NRMN, Dr. Ahmed designed and developed MyNRMN (https://my.nrmnet.net), a powerful mentoring and networking platform custom-built to support NRMN mentors, mentees, and the community. With over 7,600 mentors and 14,600 mentees participating on the platform, MyNRMN enables mentees and mentors to connect professionally (11,300 mentoring connections made), support mentoring relationships, and build their professional networks. Our members represent more than 3,700 institutions from all 50 states. Dr. Ahmed serves as (multiple) Principal Investigator of the NIH-funded AIM-AHEAD program (Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity). With other national leaders in health equity and AI/ML, he is building a national consortium with goals to enhance the participation and representation of underrepresented minority students, faculty, and researchers in developing AI/ML models and reducing health disparities and health inequities. For this project, he has developed an online national platform, AIM-AHEAD Connect (https://connect.aim-ahead.net), to support participant registrations, the proposal application process, fellows/students, and AI experts to network/mentor, online collaborations, projects, helpdesk, and online courses. Previously, he served as Executive Director in Health IT at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Assistant Dean of Education Informatics at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, and developed VSTAR (https://vstar.app.vanderbilt.edu), an integrated learning management platform to deliver competency-based education (Curriculum 2.0), and designed and developed innovative learning and assessment applications including QuizTime (https://quiztime.app.vumc.org), Compass, Portfolio, TurnOut (https://turnout.app.vumc.org), and Spark. He provides technical leadership in national and international medical education technology and standards committees.