The Project Baseline Health Study: a step towards a broader mission to map human health.

Hepatobiliary and pancreatic imaging
Liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma)
Fatty liver, NAFLD, and NASH
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
Pancreatic cancer
Technical development in MRI
Quantitative imaging

Scott W. Cousins, M.D. is currently the Robert Machemer, M.D. Professor of Ophthalmology and Immunology, Vice Chair for Research, and Director of the Duke Center for Macular Diseases at Duke Eye Center. As Vice Chair, he oversees all basic science research as well as the Ophthalmology Site-Based Research Group, which administrates clinical research for Duke Eye Center. Dr. Cousins is also Medical Director of Hospital-Based Imaging and Procedures for Duke Eye Center.

Dr. Cousins is a retina-trained ophthalmologist who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of macular diseases, especially age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, and retinal vascular diseases. Dr. Cousins is active in both clinical and laboratory research. In his clinical practice, Dr. Cousins is involved in many trials and innovative therapies for the treatment of macular diseases, especially AMD and diabetic retinopathy. He has served as site PI for numerous phase1-3 clinical trials in AMD, diabetic retinopathy, and other retinal disorders. He has served as a consultant or member of data safety monitoring committees (DSMC) for numerous pharmaceutical and biotechnology startup companies.

In his scientific laboratory, Dr. Cousins pursues both NIH-funded and industry-funded research in various areas of dry and wet AMD. In particular, he is studying the role of circulating bone marrow-derived progenitors (stem cells) in contributing to wet AMD. His laboratory is attempting to develop treatments for dry macular degeneration and improving vision in eyes with wet macular degeneration. His program is also developing blood tests and new imaging technologies for the identification of patients who are at high risk for progressing into complications.

Dr. Cousins has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, and other publications addressing topics of research or clinical care of retinal disease, especially AMD. In 2006, Dr. Cousins was awarded the prestigious Alcon Research Foundation Clinician Scientist Award. In 2008, the National Institutes of Health invited Dr. Cousins to join the National Advisory Eye Council. Dr. Cousins is also a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American Society of Retina Specialists, the Retina Society, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, the American Association of Immunologists, and the American Medical Association.

In 2010, Dr. Cousins was named one of the “Top 34 Ophthalmologists in the United States” by Becker’s ASC Review, a leading source of business and legal news for ambulatory surgery centers. They cited his leadership of the Duke Center for Macular Diseases and his ongoing research in macular degeneration as reasons for the honor.

Pamela S Douglas MD is the Ursula Geller Professor of Research in Cardiovascular Diseases in the Department of Medicine at Duke University and Director of the Multimodality Imaging Program at Duke Clinical Research Institute. During her 30+ years of experience she has led several landmark multicenter government studies and pivotal industry clinical trials along with outcomes research studies.  She is renowned for her scientific and policy work in improving the quality and appropriateness of imaging in clinical care, clinical trials and registries and through development and dissemination of national standards for imaging utilization, informatics and analysis. She has been among the pioneers in a number of areas including heart disease in women, sports cardiology, and cardio-oncology. Dr. Douglas’ wealth of experience includes authorship of over 400 peer reviewed manuscripts and 30 practice guidelines, and service as the President of the American College of Cardiology, President of the American Society of Echocardiography, and Chief of Cardiology at both the University of Wisconsin and Duke University. She has also previously served on the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. She currently serves on the External Advisory Council of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Patient Advocate Foundation.

Former Chief Data Officer for Quality, Duke Health
Former Director of Duke Forge
Former Director of Duke Crucible
Former Assistant Dean for Biomedical Informatics

Dr. Huang is currently Chief Science & Innovation Officer for Onduo by Verily, and Head of Clinical Informatics at Verily (Google's life sciences subsidiary), and is now adjunct faculty at Duke. Dr. Huang’s research interests span applied machine learning, research provenance and data infrastructure. Projects include building data provenance tools funded by the NIH’s Big Data to Knowledge program, regulatory science funded by the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation. Applied machine learning applications include “Deep Care Management” a highly interdisciplinary project with Duke Connected Care, Duke’s Accountable Care Organization, that integrates claims and EHR data for predicting unplanned admissions and risk stratifying patients for case management; CALYPSO, a collaboration with the Department of Surgery for utilizing machine learning to predict surgical complications. My team is also building the data platform for the Department of Surgery's "1000 Patients Project" an intensive biospecimen and biomarker study based around patients undergoing the controlled injury of surgery.

As Director of Duke Forge, Dr. Huang is working to build a data science culture and infrastructure across Duke University that focuses on actionable health data science. The Forge emphasizes scientific rigor, awareness that technology does not supersede clinicians’ responsibilities and human relationship with their patients, and the role of data science in society.

I have an active basic and clinical research program. I have been principal investigator on several funded clinical studies including investigations of an oral ganciclovir prodrug to treat CMV retinitis and a study to determine the safety of a cyclosporine sustained drug delivery implant in the treatment of uveitis. I am principal investigator of an ongoing multicenter trial of a fluocinolone sustained drug delivery implant to treat patients with severe uveitis and a trial of this same implant to treat diabetic macular edema. Recently, I have investigated the use of ultrasonography and optical coherence tomography to diagnose macular edema in a variety of ocular diseases. I have maintained an ongoing basic research program to test the hypothesis that cytokines are important in the development of proliferative vitreoretinopathy, an important intraocular wound healing disorder. Education: I am actively involved in resident and fellow education. I give lectures to residents and fellows on a variety of topics related to uveitis and vitreoretinal diseases and train fellows to perform vitreoretinal surgery. I train post-doctoral students and medical students to conduct clinically relevant research. I serve as a mentor for the Duke third year medical school research program. I have served on a yearly basis as course faculty at many national and international meetings.

As Vice Chair for Translational Research in the Department of Pathology, I am involved in numerous translational cancer research projects that rely on the study of human biological samples.  I am the director of the Duke BioRepository & Precision Pathology Center (Duke BRPC), a shared resource of the School of Medicine and the Duke Cancer Institute.  I serve as the PI for the National Cancer Institute's Cooperative Human Tissue Network Southern Division (a five-year UM1 grant), which lives in the Duke BRPC.  My own area of research interest is gastrointestinal tract metaplasias and their relationship to carcinogenesis, particularly in the upper GI tract.

• HIPAA and other regulatory systems and their impact on Research
• Patient Privacy
• Evaluation of outcomes in cardiac surgical patients.
• Validate statistical models of short and long term outcome of patients with IHD in non-academic databases.
• Developing methods to present these evaluations so that they can be incorporated into patient care activities on an ongoing basis.
• To understand the variability in the utilization of medical care services in ischemic heart disease (IHD).
• Methods to link data from clinical and research databases to effectively use the data for both purposes.

Research Description

General Focus: Clinical investigation the process and treatment of acute and chronic coronary artery disease and systems issues for delivery of care to patients with these illnesses. Particular interests include management of patients with chest pain and unstable angina, evaluation of the use of biochemical markers other than CK-MB for diagnosis and risk stratification in these patients, issues related to coronary artery disease in women, and systems issues regarding optimizing the process of delivery of care to patients with acute and chronic coronary artery disease. Finally, I have a strong interest in defining the genetic contribution to development of coronary artery disease.


Key words: coronary artery disease acute myocardial infarction unstable angina chest pain women biochemical markers risk stratification genetics

Michael J. Pencina, PhD
Chief Data Scientist, Duke Health
Vice Dean for Data Science
Director, Duke AI Health
Professor, Biostatistics & Bioinformatics
Duke University School of Medicine

Michael J. Pencina, PhD, is Duke Health's chief data scientist and serves as vice dean for data science, director of Duke AI Health, and professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at the Duke University School of Medicine. His work bridges the fields of data science, health care, and AI, contributing to Duke’s national leadership in trustworthy health AI.

Dr. Pencina partners with key leaders to develop data science strategies for Duke Health that span and connect academic research and clinical care. As vice dean for data science, he develops and implements quantitative science strategies to support the School of Medicine’s missions in education and training, laboratory and clinical science, and data science.

He co-founded and co-leads the national Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), a multi-stakeholder effort whose mission is to increase trustworthiness of AI by developing guidelines to drive high-quality health care through the adoption of credible, fair, and transparent health AI systems. He also spearheaded the establishment and co-chairs Duke Health’s Algorithm-Based Clinical Decision Support (ABCDS) Oversight Committee and serves as co-director of Duke’s Collaborative to Advance Clinical Health Equity (CACHE).

Dr. Pencina is an internationally recognized authority in the evaluation of AI algorithms. Guideline groups rely on his work to advance best practices for the application of clinical decision support tools in health delivery. He interacts frequently with investigators from academic and industry institutions as well as government officials. Since 2014, he has been acknowledged annually by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics as one of the world’s "highly cited researchers" in clinical medicine and social sciences, with over 400 publications cited over 100,000 times. He serves as a deputy editor for statistics at JAMA-Cardiology.

Dr. Pencina joined the Duke University faculty in 2013, and served as director of biostatistics for the Duke Clinical Research Institute until 2018. Previously, he was an associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Boston University and the Framingham Heart Study, and director of statistical consulting at the Harvard Clinical Research Institute. He received his PhD in Mathematics and Statistics from Boston University in 2003 and holds master’s degrees from the University of Warsaw in actuarial mathematics and business culture.

Email: michael.pencina@duke.edu

Web Sites:  medschool.duke.edu; aihealth.duke.edu; https://scholars.duke.edu/person/michael.pencina

Phone:  919.613.9066

Address:  Duke University School of Medicine; 2424 Erwin Road, Suite 903; Durham, NC 27705

Dr. Geeta Swamy, MD, is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, having served as the director of the Duke Perinatal Research Center and Vice Chair for Research and Faculty Development in the Department of ObGyn. She has achieved international acclaim as a clinician researcher and expert in the field of maternal immunization and perinatal infection. As a consultant to the World Health Organization, Dr. Swamy contributes her knowledge to advance international work to evaluate the immunogenicity, safety, and efficacy of vaccines in pregnant women. The American College of ObGyn has grown to be the “collective voice” for women’s health, and Dr. Swamy has been a leader within that organization for the last two decades. She currently serves as the Co-Principal Investigator for the NIH-NIAID Vaccine Treatment and Evaluation (VTEU) and CDC Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment. In addition, she has been a leader at Duke and nationally in promoting a culture of scientific integrity and transparency in research. She has been instrumental in developing and leading the School of Medicine’s research initiatives in administration, regulatory oversight, and compliance. In 2018, she became Vice Dean for Scientific Integrity in the School of Medicine and Associate Vice President for Research for Duke University. In these roles she oversees the Duke Office of Scientific Integrity (DOSI) which houses the Advancing Scientific Integrity, Services, & Training (ASIST) initiative, conflict of interest, clinical quality management, incident response in research, and research misconduct. She also oversees the Duke Office of Research Initiatives, the Duke Health IRB, Office of Research Administration (ORA), and Office of Research Contracts (ORC).