On Oct 27th, we were honored to conduct a virtual seminar hosted by the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science featuring our own alumnus Dr. Taha Kass-Hout from Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Dr. Kass-Hout is the director of Machine Learning and Chief Medical Officer at AWS. Prior to joining Amazon, Dr. Kass-Hout was a public servant in the US Federal Government (2009-2016) bringing about change through his role as the first Chief Health Informatics Officer for US FDA (2013-2016). He holds a Doctor of Medicine and Master of Science (Bioinformatics) from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Dr. Kass-Hout began the seminar by sharing his views on how big data within the field of healthcare can be harnessed to improve health outcomes and reduce overall costs for patients. He also provided several existing application cases showcasing how AI and data can make predictions for high-risk patient populations and develop personalized care programs.

The discussion of his working experience at AWS and the FDA was particularly exciting, as Dr. Kass-Hout painted our students a clear and insightful picture of how machine learning and statistical knowledge can be leveraged to solve real-world problems.

At the end of his talk, several students relayed their own experiences and aspirations with Dr. Kass-Hout, including: EHR data cleaning, missing data problems, AWS tools, the vision of AI and career opportunities at AWS.

We thank Dr. Kass-Hout for coming back to our school and imparting his invaluable suggestions and insights - we are grateful for his contribution to our UT family.