Pathak selected to lead School of Technology for Public Health
By Penny Walker, ASU News
January 22, 2025

Jyotishman Pathak, an internationally recognized leader in biomedical informatics and population health sciences, will be the inaugural dean of the new School of Technology for Public Health at Arizona State University, effective July 1.

In this critical role, Pathak will help build and launch a first-in-the-nation school shaping an emerging and critically important field that harnesses the power of technology to address pressing public health challenges and opportunities at the local, national and global levels.

An integral part of ASU Health, the School of Technology for Public Health aims to create a new and rapidly evolving space for the integration of digital technology, data-driven decision-making and a significant focus on local impact within public health. The school will contribute to the development of a technologically sophisticated workforce that will power the field of public health and is expecting to welcome its first cohort of students in the Master of Public Health and Master of Public Health Technology programs in fall 2025.

The new school was designed by working with national industry leaders who examined the needs in public health. The effort was co-chaired by Dr. Susan Blumenthal, a retired rear admiral and former U.S. assistant surgeon general, and Sir Malcolm Grant, chancellor of the University of York and founding chairman of England’s National Health Service.

“Dr. Pathak is an ideal leader for our new School of Technology for Public Health. He has been leading an extremely productive and well-funded program of research utilizing medical informatics and digital health technologies, including AI, to design and deploy solutions to a range of critical health problems,” ASU Executive Vice President and University Provost Nancy Gonzales said.  “He has the track record we were seeking to blend technology and public health in innovative ways that will be core to the identity of the new school.”

Pathak is recognized as a leading researcher, educator and innovator in the field of informatics and behavioral health, and is a generous mentor of faculty and students, Gonzales added. 

“We are very excited that he will be joining ASU as a new dean and a member of the ASU Health leadership team,” she said.

Pathak currently is the Frances &amp; John L. Loeb Professor of Medical Informatics, professor of health care policy and research in psychiatry, chief of the Division of Health Informatics and vice chair for entrepreneurship in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. 

His research focuses on analyzing electronic health records, insurance claims and social determinants of health data to study mental health service utilization and treatment outcomes for depression, substance use and suicide. This work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the National Science Foundation and the American Heart Association, among many other organizations. Pathak also is the co-founder of a mental health startup — Iris OB Health Inc. — that is developing digital health solutions for managing perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.

Pathak’s own blend of medicine, informatics and population health sciences is what attracted him to the new role. 

“I am truly honored and humbled to serve as the inaugural dean of ASU’s School of Technology for Public Health,” Pathak said. “As a leading public research university, ASU has fostered a culture of innovation, transformation and interdisciplinary collaboration — key to tackling pressing public health challenges such as maternal and child health, mental and environmental health, infectious diseases and public health communication, among others. I am excited to partner with faculty, students, staff and communities across Phoenix and Arizona to reimagine and advance public health infrastructure, education and scholarship for the 21st century.”

A prolific investigator, Pathak has authored over 275 peer-reviewed publications, multiple book chapters and invited editorials, and he has published a book on genomic and clinical data sharing. In 2023, he was appointed by the U.S. secretary of health and human services to the National Advisory Mental Health Council, where he advises the director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Pathak has received multiple awards from the American Medical Informatics Association, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Heart Association, IBM Research and Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar for research excellence, teaching and mentorship, and he serves as an editor for the American Psychiatric Association's Psychiatric News. He is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics.

Pathak earned a PhD in computer science from Iowa State University in 2007, after which he became a postdoctoral research fellow in the Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. In 2015, he joined Cornell University and resides in New York with his wife, Divya, and their two children, Anya and Aditya.

“We are delighted that Dr. Pathak will be joining ASU Health as the founding dean of the first School of Technology for Public Health in the U.S.,” said Sherine Gabriel, executive vice president of ASU Health. “Jyoti's academic, quantitative and administrative talents, along with his exceptional track record as a scholar, fundraiser and leader, make him an ideal choice. We look forward to working with him to advance the vision of the school, of ASU Health and of ASU.”

This story originally appeared on ASU News.