Getting the Public
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Research that answers what the public is asking.
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Out of the ivory tower and onto the streets.
Get involved →A public health worthy of the public listens wherever they speak, and answers with evidence, fast.
For two decades John has followed one rule: go where the public is. That rule has taken him from pioneering big data analytics for health through internet search-data surveillance, to building machine learning systems that monitor the world's news and social media, to landmark studies of artificial intelligence.
Along the way he authored the most read paper in medicine for the year, earned a place among the top 1% of scientists worldwide (NIH iCite Relative Citation Ratio), received the Burroughs Wellcome Fund's Innovator in Regulatory Science Award, and was called a “brave scientist” by Nate Silver for his work on controversial issues.
He is a computational epidemiologist at UC San Diego, where he is Head of AI at the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute, Vice Chief of Innovation in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, Professor of Medicine, and Senior Scientist in the Qualcomm Institute.
John never forgot where he came from: a trailer in the backwoods of North Carolina. He trained at CSU Bakersfield, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard, listed here in order of prestige, and he answers his email.