Biomedical informatics doctoral candidates prepare to defend dissertations

Two doctoral candidates from ASU’s Department of Biomedical Informatics will defend their dissertations this spring as partial fulfillments of degree requirements.

Justin Brown and Jeffrey Kriseman each worked under the supervision of expert BMI faculty to study and conduct research on topics of personal interest within the field of biomedical informatics.

Justin Brown’s dissertation, titled “Computational Approaches for Addressing Complexity In Biomedicine,” investigates two forms of complexity in biomedical data; the size of datasets and the physical number of mathematical computations, and the structural integrity of the data.

Brown discovered that until recently, the necessary methods and tools to effectively address the complexity of biomedical data were not readily available. He concludes by deconstructing the utilization of four methods to address this complexity in his dissertation: High Performance Computing, Monte Carlo Simulations, Multi-Level Modeling and Structural Equation Modeling.

Biomedical Informatics faculty Valentin Dinu, Diana Petitti and William Johnson, supervised the project.

He will defend at 1:30 p.m., April 2, in the SC Johnson Research building, room 261, at the Scottsdale Mayo Clinic campus.

In “An Informatics Approach to Establishing a Sustainable Public Health Community,” Jeffrey Kriseman analyzed and addressed problems with the current public health system through the design, development and deployment of enterprise architecture, and sustainable community methods.

Kriseman specifically noted the assessment of the Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS) at the Southern Nevada Health District, where he works as a public health informatics scientist. NNDSS enterprise architecture has been accepted as a sustainable platform to enhance the practice of public health by improving the quality and timeliness of data, effectiveness of an investigation, and reporting across the continuum.

Biomedical Informatics faculty Dinu, Robert Greenes and Johnson comprised the supervisory committee.

Kriseman will defend from 9-11 a.m., April 12, in the SC Johnson Research building, room 223, at the Scottsdale Mayo Clinic campus.