IU Precision Health Selects Director

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Kun Huang has been named director of data sciences and informatics for Indiana University’s first Grand Challenge initiative, Precision Health. He is an internationally-recognized scientific and academic leader in bioinformatics and computing. Huang’s research focuses translational bioinformatics and integrative genomics tools for precision health, algorithms and software for mining and visualizing large and complex biomedical data, computer vision, machine learning, medical imaging and computational biology. He is currently a professor of biomedical informatics at the Ohio State University, where he also serves as associate dean for genome informatics in the College of Medicine and director of the Division of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

At IU, Huang will lead the development of innovative informatics solutions as part of the university’s Precision Health Initiative, a five-year research initiative announced in June 2016 focused on patient-centered precision medicine therapies. The initiative, led by faculty at IU School of Medicine, IU Bloomington and IUPUI, and investigators at the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute  and the Regenstrief Institute, is the first recipient of the university’s $300 million investment in the Grand Challenges Program.

Huang received bachelor’s degrees in biology and computer science in 1996 from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. From 1996 to 2004, he studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he obtained Master of Science degrees in molecular and systems physiology, electrical engineering and mathematics, as well as a PhD in electrical and computer engineering.

Huang will join IU on July 17. In addition to his role as director of data sciences and informatics for the Precision Health Initiative, Huang will serve as chair in genomic data sciences for the Precision Health Initiative; assistant dean for data sciences, professor of medicine, and Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics senior investigator at IU School of Medicine; and senior investigator at Regenstrief Institute.