John Brownstein, PhD

John Brownstein, Ph.D. is a Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and the SVP and Chief Innovation Officer of Boston Children’s Hospital. He also directs the Computational Epidemiology Lab and the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator both at Boston Children’s. He was trained as an epidemiologist at Yale University. Overall, his work aims to have translation impact on the surveillance, control and prevention of disease. He has been at the forefront of the development and application of AI, data mining and citizen science to public health. His efforts including the platforms Vaccines.gov, Global.health and HealthMap are in use by millions of consumers each year and have been recognized by the National Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. In addition to research achievements, this translational impact comes from playing an advisory role to numerous agencies on real-time public health surveillance and AI including HHS, DHS, FDA, DOD, CDC, WHO and the White House. He was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government to outstanding scientists, the Lagrange Prize for international achievements in complexity sciences and an Emmy for his contributions to medical reporting during the covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Brownstein is co-founder of digital health companies Epidemico and Circulation and an ABC Medical News Contributor. He has authored over 300 peer-reviewed articles on epidemiology and public health.