Clinical Data Science Institutional Review Board (CDS-IRB)

Dr. Wendy Chung is a clinical and molecular geneticist and the Kennedy Family Professor of Pediatrics in Medicine at Columbia University where she directs the clinical genetics program, conducts human genetics research, and treats patients. Her research program investigates the genetics of human disease, the associated clinical phenotypes and penetrance, the correlation of genotype and phenotype, and the mechanism of disease. Dr. Chung specializes in rare genetic conditions associated with obesity, breast cancer, pulmonary hypertension, autism, and birth defects including congenital diaphragmatic hernia and congenital heart disease, to name a few. Through this work she has identified more than 40 new genes related to disease. Dr. Chung also serves as the director of the Precision Medicine Resource in the Irving Institute for Translational Research at Columbia, director of the Pediatric Neuromuscular Clinical Research Network (PNCR Network) Molecular Core and the New York Obesity Center Molecular Genetics Core, and director of the Diagnosis Initiative: Seeking Care and Opportunities with Vision for Exploration and Research (DISCOVER) program which integrates clinical care with cutting-edge research to make a diagnosis of rare diseases and complex conditions more quickly. In addition to her duties at Columbia, Dr. Chung is the director of clinical research at the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) and the principal investigator of Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research through Knowledge (SPARK) and the Simons Variation in Individuals Project (Simons VIP). Previously, she led the pilot newborn screening study of spinal muscular atrophy in New York that helped lead to nationwide adoption of this test in newborns and was the original plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned the ability to patent genes.

Dr. Chung sits on several scientific advisory boards and was on the Institute of Medicine committee on genetic testing. She has authored over 350 peer reviewed papers and 50 reviews and chapters in medical texts and has received numerous awards for her scientific and medical contributions as well as for her renowned teaching and mentoring. She received her BA in biochemistry and economics from Cornell University, her MD from Weill Cornell Medical College, and her PhD from The Rockefeller University in genetics. She completed her residency in pediatrics and fellowships in medical and molecular genetics at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.

Ms. Marcela Nava is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the School of Social Work, University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) teaching graduate and undergraduate courses on social policy, health policy, research and diverse populations. Her areas of expertise and research include health equity, immigration, and policy advocacy, focusing on issues related to power and social justice to address inequities in health, and institutional forms of discrimination that affect immigrants, people of color, women, and youth. She is a Health Policy Research Scholar through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a prestigious four-year national leadership development program for full-time doctoral students committed to supporting a Culture of Health in their disciplines and communities.

She previously served as a Co-Investigator on a National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) funded Center of Excellence grant focused on community-engaged approaches to cancer disparities, obesity prevention and HIV/AIDS among youth. In addition, Ms. Nava has extensive experience collaborating with nonprofits and communities across North Texas in building capacity to implement systems change and address health disparities among women, immigrants and people of color. As a practitioner, she advanced organizational methods that contributed to health and social equity through training, presentations, and consultation on how to identify health disparities, potential causes, actions to address, and evaluation of those efforts. Ms. Nava was an NIMHD Translational Health Disparities Scholar as well as a Presidential Scholar for the AcademyHealth Institute on Advocacy and Public Policy. She received her BS in social work from the Texas Christian University, her MSSW from UTA, and her master’s in public policy (MPP) from the University of Texas at Dallas where she is currently a PhD candidate in Public Policy and Political Economy.

Mr. Efthimios Parasidis holds a joint academic appointment with The Ohio State University at the Moritz College of Law and the College of Public Health and is a faculty affiliate with the College of Medicine’s Center for Bioethics. Additionally, he serves as Faculty Advisor for several boards and committees at Ohio State and as a consultant on law and bioethics for the US Air Force. His areas of expertise include health law, public health law and policy, bioethics, human subjects research, regulation of medical products, intellectual property, biotechnology law, military research ethics, and informed consent. In addition to teaching, he also counsels start-up companies on corporate and intellectual property matters and is a co-inventor on a patent application related to health information technology.

Early in his career, Mr. Parasidis was selected as a Fulbright Scholar where he researched legal and ethical issues related to medical informed consent policies and practices in Greece. More recently, he was awarded a Faculty Scholar in Bioethics fellowship from the Greenwall Foundation where he examined the law and ethics of military research involving service members and biomedical enhancements. This work led to a book project with Oxford University Press (currently under contract). Prior to joining the Ohio State faculty, he was a professor at the Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University and was an appointed member of the Law & Policy Workgroup of Missouri Health Connection, the entity responsible for creating Missouri’s health information exchange. Mr. Parasidis served as Assistant Attorney General for the State of New York, under Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo, as an associate with the Litigation group of Jones Day, and as a senior associate in the Intellectual Property group of Dickstein Shapiro. He also co-founded a health informatics start-up company.

Mr. Parasidis has authored over 30 publications, several book chapters, and three books that include a casebook on the ethics and regulation of research with human subjects that he co-authored; he has given over 75 professional presentations to scientific and academic communities. He received his BA in philosophy from The College of New Jersey, and his master’s in bioethics (MBE) and JD from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Peipei Ping is a Professor of Physiology, Medicine/Cardiology, and Bioinformatics at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA where she directs the Data Science in Cardiovascular Medicine research program, and the NIH BD2K Center of Excellence in Biomedical Computing program. She also serves as associate director of the Scalable Analytics Institute (ScAi) in the School of Engineering. Her research programs focus on cardiovascular proteomics and metabolomics, bioinformatics and data science, cardiac mitochondrial biology, and proteasome biology. Dr. Ping has made significant contributions to cardiovascular research, proteomics phenotyping, and Big Data science. She has led her investigative teams in characterizing the cardioprotective role of PKCε as well as other underlying mechanisms in cardiac injury and protection; pioneered the conceptualization and development of functional proteomics approaches to characterize signaling pathways in the heart; advanced proteomics/metabolomics technologies, including model systems, quantitative analyses, post-translational modification (PTM) studies, protein spatial/temporal dynamics, and omics data-driven biomarker discovery. Her programs have developed data science technologies including software tools and computational platforms that aim to integrate multi-omics data, text-mine electronic health records, promote data annotations, and thereby translate data to knowledge. In addition to her research, Dr. Ping is strongly committed to supporting and mentoring her students and has developed several cross-disciplinary educational programs that integrate computational biology, bioinformatics, computer science, statistics, and medical informatics in order to equip future investigators with skills required for the digital era of biomedicine.

Dr. Ping sits on numerous advisory boards, editorial boards, and committees at both the national and international level, including President of the North American Section (NAS) of the International Society for Heart Research (ISHR). She is a Fellow of the American Heart Association, the American Physiological Society, and ISHR. She has authored over 200 peer reviewed papers and original articles and has received numerous awards for her scientific and medical contributions. She received her BS in biomedical engineering from Zhejiang University and her PhD from the University of Arizona in cardiovascular physiology. She completed postgraduate training in vascular biology, molecular cardiology and translational research.

Dr. Charmaine Royal is an Associate Professor of African & African American Studies, Biology, Global Health, and Family Medicine & Community Health at Duke University. She is an associate faculty in the Duke Initiative for Science & Society and a senior fellow in the Kenan Institute for Ethics. At the Social Science Research Institute, she serves as director for both the Center on Genomics, Race, Identity, Difference, which examines and aims to transform how people think about, use, and are affected by race in research, healthcare, and society, and the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, which addresses the historic and contemporary sources of racism at Duke and in the surrounding community and seeks to bring about transformational and sustainable change on campus and in the community. Dr. Royal’s research, scholarship, and teaching focus on scientific, clinical, ethical, social, and policy implications of genetics and genomics research, particularly issues at the intersection of genetics and constructs of race, ethnicity, ancestry, and other descent-related identities. Her main areas of concentration are genetics and genomics in Africa and the African Diaspora; sickle cell disease and trait; genotype-environment interactions in health, disease, and treatment response; genetic ancestry inference; and public and professional perspectives and practices regarding race, ethnicity, and ancestry.

Dr. Royal leads, participates in, and advises on a variety of domestic and international initiatives, research projects, committees, and panels related to her primary areas of work and other topics concerning genetics and genomics.

She has authored peer reviewed papers and book chapters and has given professional presentations to the scientific and academic community. She received her BS in microbiology, MS in genetic counseling, and her PhD in human genetics from Howard University. She completed postgraduate training in bioethics and ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) research at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and in epidemiology and behavioral medicine at the Howard University Cancer Center.

Dr. Mario Sims is a professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) and serves as the Chief Science Officer (CSO) of the Jackson Heart Study (JHS), the largest investigation of genetic and environmental factors that may contribute to causes of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in African-Americans. He is a trained Cardiovascular Epidemiologist with a background in medical sociology and social epidemiology and has specific training in population health, health disparities, and quantitative methods of secondary data in population-based research. His current research focuses on understanding the social determinants of CVD disparities, with a specific interest in examining the extent to which racism, stress and psychosocial factors may play a role. His research has addressed the extent to which socioeconomic status (SES) contributes to health disparities by race and ethnicity, how perceived racial discrimination is associated with poor health, and how psychosocial stressors are associated with poor sleep health in African Americans. As the JHS CSO, Dr. Sims prioritizes the scientific direction of the JHS, facilitates and enhances JHS collaborations with local and national institutions, and oversees the research management activities across the research coordination core, data coordination core, and JHS investigators. He serves as chair of the JHS Ancillary Studies Subcommittee where he monitors the activity of all ancillary studies and communicates with investigators and serves as co-chair of the JHS Social Determinants of Health Working Group which collaborates and supports investigators in publishing manuscripts and conducting grant research. In addition to his duties at UMMC and the JHS, Dr. Sims also serves as chair of the American Heart Association’s Social Determinants of Health Committee, Quality of Care and Outcomes Research (QCOR), Council on Epidemiology and Prevention.

He has published 135 peer-reviewed papers, given over 115 professional presentations at scientific conferences, and has received numerous awards for his contributions to research and science. He received his BA in economics and history from University of California, Los Angeles, and both his MS and PhD in medical sociology and demography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He completed several postdoctoral fellowships in social epidemiology, preventive medicine, and cardiovascular epidemiology and is a fellow of the American Heart Association.