PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

David A. Gutman

Also known as David Gutman

David Gutman is a biomedical informatics researcher whose work uses machine learning and digital pathology in cancer and neuroscience. He earned an MD and PhD in neuroscience at Emory in 2005, completed psychiatry residency there in 2009, and joined Emory faculty in 2009. His collaborations developed the Cancer Digital Slide Archive and Digital Slide Archive, applied convolutional networks to glioma outcomes, and produced NuCLS, a dataset of breast-cancer nucleus annotations. By 2023, he was a founder of SwitchboardMD and coauthored a machine-learning workflow for neurodegenerative disease staging. His 2026 papers described AI-assisted biomedical data harmonization and evaluated pathology foundation models; as of October 2026, he is an associate professor in Emory's Department of Biomedical Informatics and a data advisor at Switchboard, MD.

Now at
Emory University and SwitchboardMD
Born
1975
Works
202
Citations
19,613
h-index
60
Badges

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2005–2009

    Emory degrees and psychiatry residency

    He earns a PhD in neuroscience and an MD at Emory in 2005. He completes a psychiatry residency at Emory in 2009.

  2. 2009

    Joining Emory's informatics faculty

    He joins Emory's faculty in 2009.

  3. 2013–2017

    Cancer Digital Slide Archive and DSA

    In 2013, he coauthors the Cancer Digital Slide Archive, a web resource for exploring TCGA pathology slides alongside clinical, genetic and radiologic descriptions. In 2017, he coauthors the Digital Slide Archive, an open-source platform for managing histology collections and integrating clinical and genomic metadata.

  4. 2018–2021

    Deep learning for cancer pathology

    In 2018, he coauthors a study using survival convolutional networks to combine digital pathology images and genomic biomarkers to predict glioma outcomes. In 2021, he coauthors NuCLS, a crowdsourced breast-cancer dataset with more than 220,000 cell-nucleus annotations for training segmentation algorithms.

  5. 2023

    Machine learning for neurodegeneration

    In 2023, he coauthors a machine-learning workflow that combines AI models with an image viewer to stage neurofibrillary tangles in neurodegenerative disease.

  6. By 2023

    Founding SwitchboardMD

    By 2023, he is a founder of SwitchboardMD.

  7. 2026

    Data harmonization and foundation models

    In 2026, he coauthors an AI-assisted approach that uses large language models to harmonize biomedical data standards. He also coauthors a study evaluating fourteen frozen feature extractors across cancer and neurodegenerative pathology image datasets.

  8. As of October 2026

    Emory professor and Switchboard data advisor

    As of October 2026, he is an associate professor in Emory's Department of Biomedical Informatics and a research scientist in the Center for Comprehensive Informatics (CCI), gaining expertise in whole-slide digital imaging. He also serves as a data advisor at Switchboard, MD, whose AI-powered platform brings patient communications and workflows together.

Career

  1. Since 2005Emory UniversityPsychiatry Resident
  2. NowSwitchboardMDFounder, Data Advisor
  3. 1996–1999Pennsylvania State University

Education

  1. 2005Emory UniversityPhD in neuroscience

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Emory University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Emory University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Emory University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. David Gutman, MD, PhD | Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University winshipcancer.emory.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Cancer Digital Slide Archive: an informatics resource to support integrated in silico analysis of TCGA pathology data pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. The Digital Slide Archive: A Software Platform for Management, Integration and Analysis of Histology for Cancer Research pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Predicting cancer outcomes from histology and genomics using convolutional networks pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. NuCLS: A scalable crowdsourcing, deep learning approach and dataset for nucleus classification, localization and segmentation arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Toward a generalizable machine learning workflow for neurodegenerative disease staging with focus on neurofibrillary tangles pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. A new AI assisted approach aligns data standards and accelerates interoperability in biomedical research nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Evaluating the Transferability of Pathology Foundation Models Across Cancer-related H&E Neurodegeneration-related Immunohistochemical Classification Tasks pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. About Us — Switchboard, MD switchboardmd.com. Checked 21 October 2026.