By Jill Pease
Mattia Prosperi, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and associate dean for AI and innovation at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, has been selected as a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, or ACMI.
Prosperi is among 25 new Fellows who have attained the ACMI’s highest level of distinction. They will be inducted on November 10 during a ceremony held at the American Medical Informatics Association annual symposium in San Francisco.
“I’m thrilled to welcome this very diverse group of talented and nationally known informatics experts. It has become extremely competitive to be elected into ACMI. This group of experts stood out in terms of their reach and impact,” said ACMI President Kevin B. Johnson, M.D., M.S., FACMI, FAMIA, FIAHSI, David L. Cohen University Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Computer and Information Science, Pediatrics, and Science Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, in a news release.
Fellows have demonstrated major contributions in biomedical informatics; have achieved national or international recognition in the field; and are committed to advancing the charitable, scientific, literary and educational purposes of the American College of Medical Informatics.
“We are incredibly proud of Dr. Prosperi and his selection as a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics,” said Beth A. Virnig, Ph.D., M.P.H., dean of the College of Public Health and Health Professions. “Dr. Prosperi has displayed visionary leadership of our college’s AI activities, including our undergraduate AI certificate, a soon-to-be launched graduate AI certificate and the AI Ph.D. fellowship program, as well as mentorship and research support for PHHP faculty, and service and thought leadership at the national level.”
The director of the Data Intelligence Systems Lab, Prosperi’s expertise includes data science at large, artificial intelligence and causal machine learning, with a focus on the domains of biomedical — and epidemiology — informatics. His research leverages technology and data intelligence to develop interventional AI models for improving lives. He is an advocate for increased diversity and inclusion in AI research, and the ethical use of AI in health studies so that findings are accurate, fair and do not cause unintended harm.
“Dr. Prosperi is recognized as an international leader in biomedical informatics. His work in AI and causal inference and leadership as associate dean for AI and innovation are testimony to the broad impact he has in the field, both individually and through the support of others,” said Stephen Kimmel, M.D., dean’s professor and chair of the department of epidemiology.
Prosperi leads several research projects, including the development of algorithms to spot new SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, forecast HIV transmission patterns and conduct real-time surveillance of antimicrobial resistance. He and his colleagues are developing the first reporting guidelines on causal prediction models in order to improve the overall quality, transparency and reproducibility of results produced by studies using these models.
He serves as an organizer of the International Bioinformatics Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology and editor of the Journal of Healthcare Informatics Research, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, and Global Health Research and Policy.