Meet the experts presenting at RAIIDIUS 2026.
Showing 10 of 10 speakers
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
CUIMC Division of Infectious Diseases
Dr. Reyes Nieva is a biomedical informatician specializing in AI in medicine and public health. His research aims to advance precision health for all by harnessing AI and informatics to accelerate scientific knowledge discovery and translation at scale, strengthen next-generation learning health systems, and interrogate the ethical, legal, and social considerations necessary for the development of human-centered AI. Dr. Reyes Nieva's research draws on prior experience in health systems strengthening and humanitarian efforts including roles in strategic information for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program at Harvard and a three-year term as a Commissioner of Human Rights. Dr. Reyes Nieva received his PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University, while concurrently a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Medical School. He also holds a Master of Applied Science in Spatial Analysis from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a BA in History and Sociology from Yale University. Recently he was named a STAT Wunderkind, which highlights 30 of the top early-career researchers in North America.
Assistant Professor of Medical Sciences (in Medicine and in Epidemiology)
Dr. Castor is an Assistant Professor in the CUIMC Division of Infectious Diseases. She is an epidemiologist who studies how to deliver public health innovations at scale by examining the unique and joint effects of biomedical, behavioral, and structural factors that affect infectious diseases in priority populations in low- and middle-income countries and in marginalized populations in the US. Prior, she led implementation research activities within the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as Senior Epidemiologist/Acting Chief of the Implementation Science branch of the USAID Office of HIV/AIDS and Senior Epidemiologist in the Department of State Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator. Dr. Castor worked within PEPFAR-supported programs to design, implement, and evaluate comprehensive HIV interventions and introduce and scale-up novel prevention technologies. Her HIV research involves intersecting areas of interest such as women’s and reproductive health, health disparities, mental health, nutrition, cervical cancer and other emerging infections.
Assistant Professor of Medicine at CUIMC
Dr. Zucker is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Columbia University Medical Center and Assistant Medical Director of the New York City STD Prevention Training Center. Dr. Zucker trained as a combined adult and pediatric infectious diseases physician and is an experienced HIV, HIV prevention, and sexual health care provider providing status-neutral care to patients of all ages in the NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Comprehensive Health Program Sexual Health Clinic. His research focuses on the intersection of data science, behavioral science, and implementation science, focusing on developing and testing ways to optimize engagement in the sexual health cascade of care for individuals both living with or at risk of sexually transmitted infections.
Harold C. Neu Professor of Infectious Diseases and Chief of Infectious Diseases at CUIMC
Dr. Sobieszczyk is the Harold Neu Professor of Infectious Diseases (in Medicine) at the Columbia University Medical Center. She is the Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. Dr. Sobieszczyk is a clinical virologist and the principal investigator of the NIH-funded Columbia Collaborative Clinical Trials Unit which has been advancing the science of HIV and emerging infections like SARS-CoV-2.
Dr. Heck is a postdoctoral research scientist in Columbia University’s Division of Infectious Diseases. He is an epidemiologist with a decade of experience researching HIV prevention strategies for key and vulnerable populations in eastern and southern Africa. His research primarily seeks to improve the availability, access, use, and continuation of HIV prevention services, methods, and interventions using social, behavioral, and implementation science approaches. Recently, he has been examining the dynamics of risk perception and its influence on risk-reduction behaviors. Dr. Heck is also interested in identifying and addressing social, structural, and systemic drivers of health disparities. Dr. Heck holds a PhD in epidemiology and an MPH in population and family health, both from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor
CUIMC Department of Biomedical Informatics
Dr. Hripcsak is Vivian Beaumont Allen Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University. He is a board-certified internist with degrees in chemistry, medicine, and biostatistics. Dr. Hripcsak’s current research focus is on the clinical information stored in electronic health records and on the development of next-generation health record systems. Using nonlinear time series analysis, machine learning, knowledge engineering, and natural language processing, he is developing the methods necessary to support clinical research and patient safety initiatives. He serves as a PI on Columbia’s eMERGE grant, as a PI on Columbia’s regional recruitment center for the All of Us precision medicine program, and as site PI for Columbia’s role on the All of Us Data and Research Center. Dr. Hripcsak is a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, the American College of Medical Informatics, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published over 350 papers.
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics
Dr. Ostropolets is an Associate Director at Janssen Research and Development, a Johnson & Johnson Company where she works on methods to advance observational research for medical products safety. More broadly, as Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University and a long-standing OHDSI collaborator, she designs, builds and disseminates frameworks, approaches and tools for minimizing bias in observational research with a specific focus on patient phenotyping. Since 2022, she has led the OHDSI Vocabulary improvement initiative focused on improving the quality, fit-for-use, and transparency of the OHDSI Standardized Vocabularies. Dr. Ostropolets received her medical degree and completed her residency at Kharkiv National Medical University. Before joining Janssen, she was Director, Head of Innovation Lab for Odysseus Data Services coordinating business intelligence initiative for harmonization and visualization of real-world data.
Professor of Medicine
Dr. Yin is an infectious disease specialist who has dedicated his career towards optimizing HIV treatment and prevention. His research focuses upon non-infectious complications of HIV which is growing in significance as people with HIV live longer with effective antiretrovirals therapy (ART) and experience accentuated aging-related complications. He has evaluated the epidemiology and pathogenic mechanisms of HIV associated bone loss in postmenopausal women, adolescents, and children with perinatal infection. Using novel imaging techniques and translational bone cell assays, he has made important discoveries about the dysregulation of bone metabolism associated with HIV infection and ART and investigated therapeutic strategies to mitigate bone loss and fracture. In addition to skeletal complications, Dr. Yin has also studied the impact of HIV and ART on cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, obesity, frailty and falls. Recent work has extended to evaluation of epigenetic aging in children, adolescents and adults living with HIV.
Executive Director - STI Program, Bureau of Hepatitis, HIV, and Sexually Transmitted Infections
NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Dr. Pathela is the Executive Director of the STI Program in the Bureau of Hepatitis, HIV, and STI at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOHMH). She has overall responsibility for directing, evaluating, and coordinating the activities of the Program, which consists of roughly 90 staff who conduct work in STI program implementation, surveillance and field operations, and epidemiology, research and evaluation. She serves on the American STD Association’s Board of Directors and as an Associate Editor of the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Vice President, Data, Technology, and Innovation in Global Development
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Michael N. Cantor, MD, MA is Vice President, Data, Technology, and Innovation in Global Development at Regeneron. His current role focuses on clinical data optimization and using AI and other innovative analytics approaches to design and run clinical trials more effectively. Prior to this role, he led clinical informatics at the Regeneron Genetics Center (RGC), where his work focused on developing and optimizing phenotypes from EHR and cohort data and linking them with genetic data to help discover new drug targets. His group’s phenotyping work at the RGC was crucial to several high-profile discoveries including the roles of INHBE and CIDEB in metabolic disease and the initial results of exome sequencing of 450,000 UK Biobank participants. Prior to Regeneron, he was Director of Clinical Research Informatics at New York University School of Medicine where he led informatics for the CTSI. Dr. Cantor is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU School of Medicine and currently sees patients weekly at Bellevue’s medicine clinic.