Texas Children's Hospital Inaugurates a New Data Science Center

Texas Children’s Hospital recently inaugurated a new Data Science Center on the first floor of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) that will serve as a centralized research hub for all data scientists throughout the hospital. Dr. Zhandong Liu, Chief of Computational Sciences at Texas Children’s Hospital and Duncan NRI investigator, who is also a Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Endowed Chair, and associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine, will lead the Center.

“A decade ago, we started a small computational research group at the Duncan NRI and Texas Children’s with three young faculty members,” said Dr. Huda Zoghbi, founding director of Duncan NRI, distinguished service professor at Baylor College and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
“With the recent exponential growth in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine, our data science team has now grown to over 30 people and continues to expand at a rapid pace. We envisioned this center as a physical collaboration space for our growing team and are thankful for the generous gift from the Brown Foundation that helped translate our vision into a reality.” 

The center consists of a modern open-concept collaborative space with 40 workstations and meeting spaces and will host informational seminars and workshops on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning paradigms for Texas Children’s and Baylor faculty and staff.

“Having this central hub will offer unparalleled opportunities for closer and more frequent interactions among the members of our multidisciplinary teams and accelerate scientific discovery,” Dr. Zhandong Liu said.