Medical Knowledge and Decision Support

Janna was born in Cape Town, South Africa where she completed her undergraduate studies in Mathematics and Computer Science. Thereafter, she moved to Cambridge, UK to join the Cheminformatics and Metabolism group at the European Bioinformatics Institute (2006-2015) where she led the development of the ChEBI molecular ontology and metabolism knowledgebase. She completed part-time Master’s degrees in Computer Science (University of South Africa, 2011) and Philosophy (Open University, 2012). She obtained her PhD in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge (2015-2019), where she studied the role of metabolism in healthy aging using multi-omics data and a time-series modelling approach. 

She completed postdoctoral studies at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (2019-2022) working at the intersection between knowledge-based systems and artificial intelligence, at the EPFL (2020-2022) in neurodegenerative disease bioinformatics, and with the Human Behaviour-Change Project at University College London (2017-2022) where she helped to create an artificial intelligence-driven knowledge system for evidence about human behavior change to support decision-making, policy and practice.

Since August 2022 she is Assistant Professor of Medical Knowledge and Decision Support at the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care, Faculty of Medicine, University of Zurich, and Vice-Director of the School of Medicine at the University of St. Gallen. The focus of her research is on digitalization in the clinic and how new digital technologies can be harnessed to accelerate biomedical discovery and improve the working lives of clinicians.

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Charlotte studied Mathematics at Free University Berlin (2009-2014), she then worked as a software developer for a consulting firm in Berlin (2015-2016). She obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge (2016-2020), where she studied computational methods for RNA structure prediction in RNA viruses.

She then went on as a researcher at Seoul National University (2021-2022), where she was part of the team developing a tool for fast and accurate protein structure search. Afterwards, she worked on genomics data as a R&D associate at a diagnostics company in Japan (2022-2024).

Charlotte joined the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care at the University of Zurich in March 2024 as a postdoctoral researcher, where she will work on approaches to interpretable AI for biomedical discovery and clinical applications.

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Paula studied physics, theory of literature, and visual arts in Novi Sad, Belgrade, and Leipzig. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Arts from the University of Fine Arts in Leipzig (2009) and is a practising visual artist. She obtained her PhD in Art and Visual History from Humboldt University Berlin (2021), where she investigated active functions that diverse types of images played in generating medical knowledge of hysteria/functional neurological disorder from the late 19th to early 21st century. 

She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for History of Art and Architecture, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2022-2023), where she worked on the DFG project “Browser Art” and conducted her own research into the algorithmic reconstruction of images from sparse data in neuroimaging and black hole imaging. 

Paula is an active member of the History Philosophy and Culture (HPC) Working Group of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT) Collaboration and, since January 2024, a visiting researcher at the Department for Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Technical University Berlin.

Since February 2024, Paula is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care at the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich in the Sinergia project “VascX”. Her research focus is on examining knowledge-producing functions of new imaging and visualisation technologies in natural sciences, from neuroscience to medicine to physics.

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Fabio is a radiation oncologist currently working at the Inselspital, University Hospital of Bern.
Before he started working as a doctor he studied medicine at the University of Würzburg, Germany until 2019, where he also did his MD thesis on regulatory T cells in immunology.
He is a clinical researcher focusing on the implementation of information technology, including machine learning techniques in the clinical practice of oncology and radiation therapy.
His research projects include the usage of large language models (LLMs) and other natural language processing techniques for data extraction and classification of clinical text as well as of scientific literature. Furthermore, he is engaged in projects evaluating LLMs in the clinical context and in initiatives regarding the definition of clear and interoperable data structures using the concept of Common Data Elements.
Fabio is board member of the ISROI (International Society for Radiation Oncology Informatics) and active member of the task group “Digitization and AI” of the DEGRO (German Society for Radiation Oncology), as well as of the Swiss Health Data Space the ESTRO (European Society for Radiation Oncolgy) and the SASRO (Scientific Society of Swiss Radiation Oncology).

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Marie studied biology at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf and at the Michigan State University from 2014-2018. Afterwards, Marie completed her Master’s degree in Molecular Biosciences with a major in Tumor Biology at the University of Heidelberg in cooperation with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). During her studies, Marie could gain various experiences abroad as well as in the pharmaceutical industry.

From 2021-2023, Marie worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company in Zurich. 

Since January 2023, Marie is a PhD student in Management at the Chair of Medical Knowledge and Decision Support at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), as well as at the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care (IfIS) at the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich. Marie is investigating future changes in access to medical information and the impact of increasing digitalization on physicians’ working lives, including their workflows, professional identities, their relationships with each other and with their patients. Moreover, she explores the decision-making process for cancer treatments, specifically treatment planning for prostate cancer.

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Esther pursued her academic studies in Health Psychology at the University of Zurich from 2001 to 2007. Following her academic pursuits, Esther has been involved in various roles within the fields of research and practice, with a specific focus on Behavior Change. She implemented these methodologies in both practical and research settings, addressing areas such as Energy Conservation, Customer Engagement, Ecologically Sustainable Behavior, Employee Engagement, and Health Behavior.

Since 2012, she has been working as a researcher and lecturer. Initially at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and since 2017 at Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences. There, she was engaged in innovation development for six years. Currently, she teaches at the intersection of computer science and psychology in the field of Digital Health.

Starting February 2024, Esther has taken on the role of an external Ph.D. candidate in the DOK program at the School of Medicine, specifically at the Chair of Medical Knowledge and Decision Support at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). Her doctoral research focuses on exploring the potential for personalization within digital behavior support interventions within the realm of women’s metabolic health. Her research also investigates the feasibility of integrating digital support mechanisms with medical counseling services.

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Björn pursued his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg from 2018 to 2022. Currently, he is continuing his studies in Computer Science at the master’s level at the same university.

From 2016 to 2020, Björn worked as a software developer. 

Since October 2023, Björn has been employed as a Semantic Technologist at the Institute for Implementation Science in Health Care at the University of Zurich. There, he is focused on facilitating the development and management of ontologies.

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Livia completed her bachelor’s in medicine at the University of Zurich from 2019-2022. She is continuing her studies within the Joint Medical Master at the University of St.Gallen until the end of 2025. Through her work at the Chair, Livia will gain new perspectives on her future career as a physician and will bring her young experience in clinical medicine to her work at the university.

Since February 2023, Livia is a student assistant at the Chair of Medical Knowledge and Decision Support at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). Her work focuses on selected projects in research and teaching. Together with the team she is studying the impact of digital systems in the medical working environment and implementing ideas for the education of medical students in St.Gallen.

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Yating is a master’s student in the Department of Computational Linguistics at the University of Zurich. She is working on her master’s thesis on explanatory predictions of retinal diseases using multimodal LLMs. Previously, she worked with Paula and Charlotte on the AI Images of Humans project.

She completed her master’s project in the Krauthammer Lab at UZH&USZ, under the supervision of Dr. Farhad Nooralahzadeh, which involved generating radiology reports from chest X-rays using multimodal LLMs. From February to July 2024, she was a research assistant at the Department of Political Science at UZH, where she moderated AI-related healthcare discussions using GPT-4 with Valeria Vuk and Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Gilardi.

Before this, she received her B.A. in Hindi Language and Literature from BISU, China, and MGAHV, India, and worked for a year as a language engineer at FunPlus, developing multi-lingual corpora and rule-based NLP systems.

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Joshua finished his bachelor’s in computational science & engineering at the ETH Zurich from 2017-2021. Since then, he is continuing his studies with a Master in Biomedical Engineering at the same university, where he focused on the usage of machine learning onto medical research questions.

Between 2021 and 2023, he worked as a research assistant at the Child- and Adolescent Research Department of the Psychiatric University Hospitals Basel analysing medical images to understand the neurobiology of psychiatric diseases.

Since joining the team in December 2023, Joshua supports the team with the programming tasks and code testing on selected research projects