PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hongfang Liu

Hongfang Liu is a biomedical informatics researcher whose work applies natural language processing and AI to clinical data. She studied mathematics and statistics at the University of Science and Technology of China and earned a doctorate in computer science at the CUNY Graduate Center. At Mayo Clinic, she led the clinical natural language processing program and the Open Health NLP consortium, was inducted into the American College of Medical Informatics in 2016, and received the AMIA Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics in 2022. She joined UTHealth Houston in 2023 as the inaugural McWilliams Chair. Since May 2026, she is the inaugural chair of the Department of Quantitative and Systems Health Sciences at UT Austin's Dell Medical School and chief translational AI and informatics officer for UT Dell Medical Center.

Now at
Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin and UT Dell Medical Center

Timeline

  1. By 2003

    A CUNY informatics doctorate

    She earns a B.S. in mathematics and statistics at the University of Science and Technology of China, an M.S. in computer and information science at Fordham University, and a Ph.D. in computer science specialized in biomedical informatics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A research assistant position at Columbia University gives her work on clinical natural language processing. The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have funded her research since 2003.

  2. By 2016

    Clinical NLP at Mayo Clinic

    Mayo Clinic hires her as one of its first computer scientists, and she helps lead its new data analysis efforts. By 2016, she is a professor of biomedical informatics and consultant in the Department of Health Sciences Research who leads Mayo's clinical Natural Language Processing Program. Her work includes the Clinical Language Analytics Service Infrastructure, an AI-driven clinical NLP platform that supports more than 800 research projects and over 50 NIH-funded studies.

  3. November 2016

    Induction into the ACMI

    The American College of Medical Informatics inducts her in November 2016. The college is made up of elected fellows from the U.S. and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to medical informatics.

  4. March 2022

    MedTator and the OHNLP consortium

    In March 2022, Bioinformatics publishes MedTator, a serverless annotation tool for corpus development that she coauthors with Huan He, Sunyang Fu, Liwei Wang, Sijia Liu and Andrew Wen. The Open Health Natural Language Processing consortium she leads at Mayo Clinic establishes widely adopted open-source tools for biomedical NLP.

  5. 2022

    AMIA's Lindberg Award

    In 2022, while in Mayo Clinic's Department of Artificial Intelligence and Informatics, she receives the Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics from the American Medical Informatics Association. The award recognizes a specific technological, research or educational contribution that advances biomedical informatics.

  6. 2023

    Recruited to UTHealth Houston

    UTHealth Houston recruits her in 2023 to the McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics through a CPRIT Established Investigator Award. She finds that UTHealth Houston and its clinical partners hold extensive clinical data that university researchers could use for their studies if they had tools to extract and analyze it.

  7. 2023–2026

    UT System AI initiatives

    As the inaugural holder of the D. Bradley McWilliams Chair, established in 2023, she develops a translational AI program and the UTHealth Houston learning health system, and organizes the TMC AI Summit for Texas Medical Center experts. Through the UT System Health Intelligence Platform, she leads efforts to unify data infrastructure across all UT health institutions, and she directs the UT REAL-Health AI Pilot Program. She is also a principal leader of ReCARDO, a $27.2 million National Institute on Aging initiative on harmonizing real-world clinical data for Alzheimer's disease and dementia research.

  8. Since May 2026

    Chair at Dell Medical School

    In May 2026, Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin appoints her the inaugural chair of its new Department of Quantitative and Systems Health Sciences. She holds the Carolyn and Kenneth Shine Endowed Chair in Artificial Intelligence and serves as chief translational AI and informatics officer for UT Dell Medical Center. The department launches in August 2026.

Career

  1. Since 2026Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at AustinInaugural Chair
  2. Since 2026UT Dell Medical CenterChief Translational AI and Informatics Officer
  3. From 2023UTHealth HoustonD. Bradley McWilliams Chair
  4. Columbia UniversityResearch Assistant
  5. Mayo ClinicProfessor of Biomedical Informatics and Consultant

Education

  1. University of Science and Technology of ChinaB.S. in Mathematics and Statistics
  2. Fordham UniversityM.S. in Computer and Information Science
  3. City University of New YorkPhD

From the biography.

  1. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes University of Texas at Austin. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Texas at Austin. 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.
  3. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes University of Texas at Austin. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  4. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes University of Texas at Austin. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hongfang Liu yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Hongfang Liu, PhD ci4cc.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. A different kind of biology: A computer expert’s embrace of biomedical informatics sbmi.uth.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Hongfang Liu, Ph.D. will be inducted into the American College of Medical Informatics alumniassociation.mayo.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Hongfang Liu joins Dell Medical School to lead new department, serve as chief translational AI and informatics officer dellmed.utexas.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. OHNLP Publications ohnlp.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Hongfang Liu, Ph.D. (HSR ’10), receives an award, Mayo Clinic Rochester alumniassociation.mayo.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Hongfang Liu, Ph.D. | Dell Medical School dellmed.utexas.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.