PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Noémie Elhadad

Noémie Elhadad is a biomedical informatics researcher whose work applies machine learning and natural language processing to medicine. She earned a computer science PhD at Columbia in 2006, joined its Department of Biomedical Informatics in 2007, and showed that definitions of unfamiliar medical terms improve lay readers’ comprehension of technical sentences. At Columbia, she chaired the Health Analytics Center, coauthored a clinical-text analysis task, became a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and served as principal investigator for Phendo, a project built around daily observations from patients. She coauthored a 2025 paper calling for healthcare AI to be evaluated through its causal effects on clinical outcomes; since June 2026, she serves as vice dean for AI initiatives at VP&S and chair of Biomedical Informatics.

Works
236
Citations
10,806
h-index
50
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2006

    A PhD and medical NLP study

    She earns a computer science PhD at Columbia University in 2006. Her 2006 study finds that adding definitions of unfamiliar medical terms significantly improves lay readers’ comprehension of sentences containing technical terms.

  2. 2007

    Joining Columbia’s informatics faculty

    She serves on the computer science faculty at The City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center before joining Columbia’s Department of Biomedical Informatics in 2007.

  3. 2013–2016

    Leading the Health Analytics Center

    She chairs the Health Analytics Center at Columbia’s Data Science Institute from 2013 to 2016.

  4. 2015

    SemEval clinical-text analysis

    In 2015, she coauthors “SemEval-2015 Task 14: Analysis of Clinical Text.”

  5. 2016

    An ACMI fellowship

    She becomes a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics in 2016.

  6. March 2017

    Principal investigator for Phendo

    In March 2017, she serves as principal investigator for Phendo, which gathers day-to-day observations that patients report about endometriosis.

  7. March 2025

    Causal evaluation of healthcare AI

    In March 2025, she coauthors a paper calling for healthcare AI development, evaluation, and validation to account for causal effects on clinical outcomes.

  8. Since June 2026

    Vice dean for AI initiatives

    Columbia appoints her chair of Biomedical Informatics in December 2022, effective January 2023; in June 2026, she becomes vice dean for AI initiatives at VP&S. She leads the college’s AI strategy across research, education, clinical care, and operations, and her research applies machine learning and natural language processing to medicine. At an October 2026 seminar, she presents work using claims and EHR data to flag patients who may have undiagnosed endometriosis.

Career

  1. Since 2007Columbia UniversityChair of Biomedical Informatics, Chair
  2. Until 2007City University of New YorkComputer science faculty member
  3. 2006–2007City College of New YorkComputer science faculty member

Education

  1. 2006Columbia UniversityComputer science PhD

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

Most-cited works

  1. Intelligible Models for HealthCare2015 · ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) · 1,674 citationsWith Johannes Gehrke
  2. A review of approaches to identifying patient phenotype cohorts using electronic health records2013 · Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association · 531 citationsWith Eric Fosler-Lussier
  3. An Unsupervised Aspect-Sentiment Model for Online Reviews2010 · 507 citations
  4. Indicators of retention in remote digital health studies: a cross-study evaluation of 100,000 participants2020 · npj Digital Medicine · 405 citations
  5. Beyond the Stars: Improving Rating Predictions using Review Text Content2009 · 392 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Columbia University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. Nonprofit roles are 2.3 times as common in AI safetyIncludes Columbia University. We estimate where people focused on safety, alignment and evaluation work. Nonprofit roles appear for 25.1% of safety people with known affiliations, compared with 11.0% in other areas.
  3. Universities had a net outflow of 2,068 moves in AI careersIncludes Columbia University. Our estimates of career flows and median h-index across universities and companies in AI, including the role of joint appointments and earlier academic jobs.
  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 Columbia University. 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 with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Noémie Elhadad, PhD | Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons vagelos.columbia.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Comprehending Technical Texts: Predicting and Defining Unfamiliar Terms - PMC pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. SemEval-2015 Task 14: Analysis of Clinical Text - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Phendo, An App to Track and Understand Endometriosis | EndoFound endofound.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. AI as an intervention: improving clinical outcomes relies on a causal approach to AI development and validation - PMC pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Noémie Elhadad Appointed Chair of Department of Biomedical Informatics | Columbia University Irving Medical Center cuimc.columbia.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Noémie Elhadad, PhD Appointed Vice Dean for AI Initiatives | Columbia University Irving Medical Center cuimc.columbia.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Dean’s Distinguished Seminar Series, Noémie Elhadad, PhD - University of Colorado Anschutz calendar.cuanschutz.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.