People

Michael Ripperger, Application Developer

Michael received a BE in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University and, during this time, worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Walsh Lab for two years through the SyBBURE Searle Program. He was previously a Fleming Scholar at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. He is now an application developer in the lab and specializes in developing and evaluating machine learning algorithms.

Katey Robinson, Project Manager

Katey is a Tennessee native and graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Prior to joining the lab, she spent several years as a medical scribe and traveling project manager. In this role she developed, implemented, and managed inpatient, ambulatory, and emergency department scribe programs for healthcare groups across the country. This included the implementation of a scribe program for VUMC’s Department of Urologic Surgery during Vanderbilt’s 2017 EHR transition from StarPanel to eStar. 

In the lab, Katey provides project management support across Dr. Walsh’s research portfolio and facilitates day to day lab administration. She has also served as a chart validator for numerous projects investigating natural language processing (NLP) for phenotypic extraction.

Yufei Long, Research Analyst

Yufei is originally from Shenzhen, China. She holds an MPH degree from Vanderbilt University and a B.S. in Biology from Boston College. She played D1 tennis for 5 years at Vanderbilt and Boston College, where she also took on the role of senior captain. Her research interests lie in the areas of behavioral health, qualitative research, and public health policy.

Ketan Jadhav, Statistical Analyst

Ketan received his Master’s degree in Analytics from Northeastern University and has a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Technology. Prior to joining the lab, he worked at various global and regional firms in biomedical, IT, and finance industries. When he is not analyzing data, Ketan likes playing piano, biking, and baking.

Alex Becker

Alex is an Ohio native and received a degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. Prior to joining the Walsh Lab, he worked as a student researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center. His research interests include applied predictive modeling for suicidality and machine learning. In his free time, he enjoys camping, hiking, kayaking, and photography.

Ioana Danciu

Ioana is a second decade PhD student in the Walsh Lab. Her research focuses on predictive deep learning models using multi-modal data.

Barrett Jones

Barrett is a PhD student from Salt Lake City, Utah. He has a master’s degree in Statistics from Columbia University and prior to moving to Nashville worked as a data analyst at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He is interested in applying machine learning to better understand depression treatment trajectories. In his free time he enjoys golfing, biking and skiing.

KJ Krause

KJ is a PhD student from Redding, California. He received a degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of California Davis. Prior to joining VUMC, he worked as a Quality Control analyst at Genentech and as a research assistant at UC Davis. His research interests include applied predictive modeling, machine learning, and precision medicine. Some of his hobbies include snowboarding, cycling, and cooking.

Hyunjoon Lee

Hyunjoon Lee, MS, completed his BS in Computer Science and MS in Data Science from Brown University. During his time at Brown University, he worked on several research projects focusing on mental health and substance use in the School of Public Health. Following his MS, Hyunjoon worked at the Psychiatric & Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit (PNGU) and Center for Precision Psychiatry (CPP) in Massachusetts General Hospital under Dr. Jordan W. Smoller as senior data analyst. He primarily focuses on suicide risk prediction, substance use disorders, and other psychiatry research using electronic health records (EHR) data. His research interests are phenotyping/predictive modeling of suicide and substance abuse/overdoes and implementing clinician decision support tools to prevent deaths by suicide/overdose.

Leigh Anne Tang

Leigh Anne received her BS in Statistics from the University of Notre Dame (2018). She participated in the Vanderbilt Biomedical Informatics Summer Program (VBISP) in Summer 2017 and returned to Vanderbilt in 2018 as an application developer for the Center for Precision Medicine. Her current work involves the use of predictive modeling for opioid use disorder-related mortality in the domains of public health and clinical care. 

Hannah Slater 

Hannah is currently pursuing a MS and PhD in biomedical informatics at Vanderbilt University. She has a dual Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry from the University of Alabama. Her current research interests are characterization, identification, and prevention of suicide and adverse events.