2023 C. STEPHEN FOSTER, MD HONORARY LECTURER
Michael F. Chiang, MD
Director of the National Eye Institute
Michael F. Chiang is Director of the National Eye Institute, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. By background, he is a pediatric ophthalmologist and is also board-certified in clinical informatics. His research focuses on the interface of biomedical informatics and clinical ophthalmology in areas such as retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), telehealth, artificial intelligence, electronic health records, data science, and genotype-phenotype correlation. He is an Adjunct Investigator at the National Library of Medicine, and his group has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and developed an assistive artificial intelligence system for ROP that received Breakthrough Status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Dr. Chiang began at NIH in November 2020. He serves as Co-Chair of a trans-NIH working group for high value data asset sustainability, Chair of a trans-NIH clinical trials infrastructure working group, Co-Chair of a trans-NIH medical imaging working group, Co-Chair of the NIH AIM-AHEAD advisory committee, Co-Chair of the NIH Common Fund Bridge2AI program, and Co-Chair of the NIH Scientific Data Council. Before coming to NIH, he received a BS in Electrical Engineering and Biology from Stanford University, an MD from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and an MA in Biomedical Informatics from Columbia University. He completed residency and pediatric ophthalmology fellowship training at the Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute. Between 2001-2010, he worked at Columbia University, where he was Anne S. Cohen Associate Professor of Ophthalmology & Biomedical Informatics, director of medical student education in ophthalmology, and director of the introductory graduate student course in biomedical informatics. From 2010-2020, he worked at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), where he was Knowles Professor of Ophthalmology & Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology, and Associate Director of the Casey Eye Institute. He co-directed an NIH-funded T32 training program in visual science for graduate students and research fellows, as well as an NIH-funded K12 clinician-scientist program at OHSU.
He previously served as a member of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) Board of Trustees, Chair of the AAO IRIS Registry Data Analytics Committee, Chair of the AAO Artificial Intelligence Committee, Chair of the AAO Medical Information Technology Committee, and on numerous other national and local committees. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association and is Associate Editor of the textbook Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine. He has previously served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, and on the Editorial Boards for Ophthalmology, Ophthalmology Retina, and the Asia-Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology.