Our team

Helen Chen

Director of GenAI Health lab

Helen Chen, Professor of Practice; Director Professional Practice Centre In Health Systems

Office: Toby Jenkins Building (TJB) 2272

Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 42131

Email: helen.chen@uwaterloo.ca

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Bing Hu

Alumni & Collaborator
  • Research impact: Author of 25+ publications spanning generative AI for drug discovery, synthetic data, and LLM-based literature screening, including work in Scientific Reports and at ICML, ICLR, and NeurIPS workshops.
  • Applied AI in health: Built methods at the Public Health Agency of Canada that generated 50+ million synthetic COVID-19 records and automated systematic reviews with partners like WHO and CERN.
  • Leadership and teaching: Co-founded Wat.AI (1,000+ members), co-chairs Health Canada’s 2026 Science Forum plenary on LLMs, and instructs a University of Waterloo GenAI course.

PhD Students

Beth Horodyski

PhD Candidate

Research interests: 

  • Disruptive Innovation Evaluation in Health Technology
  • GenAI and Quantum systems in support of human health and performance

Eric Kun Huh

PhD Candidate

Research interests: 

  • Health Informatics and Digital Health

  • Computer Science and Healthcare Technology

  • Clinical Decision Support and Healthcare Innovation

Tianyi (Tina) Teng

PhD Candidate

Research interests: 

  • Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

  • Machine Learning for Health Applications

  • Data-Driven Clinical Decision-Making

Ying Zhu

PhD Candidate

Research Interests: 

  • Healthcare finances and digital transformation
  • Role of governance in health data visualization 
  • AI-ready data repositories

Ziting Shen

PhD Candidate

Research interests: 

  • Agentic Systems design in Public Health
  • Applications of AI/ML in healthcare
  • Algorithmic fairness

Master's Students

Christopher Lo

MHIA Student

Research Interests:

  • LLM-based analysis of online health discourse on Reddit, including vaccine hesitancy and public sentiment

  • Digital health solutions to improve patient engagement and chronic disease management

Jacie Jermier

MSc Candidate

Research Interests: 

  • Advancing discovery through computational methods
  • Whole-body metabolism models, with a particular emphasis on liver function and its role in metabolic processes

Research Interests:

  • Agentic LLM pipelines for real-time public-health surveillance of social media (Reddit, YouTube, X), with a focus on vaccine misinformation and health discourse.
  • Evidence-grounded claim verification and behavioural coding of online health content, developed with public health units to inform communication strategy.
  • Evaluation and human validation of GenAI and agentic systems for reliable, interpretable use in public health and clinical settings, including conversational AI for Parkinson's disease. thats my updated research interests 

Ping Yen

MMath Candidate

Research interests: 

  • Time-series data analysis 
  • Synthetic data generation
  • Synthetic Data Privacy & Fidelity

Undergraduate Students

Genevieve Lee

Student Member

Research Interest: 

  • Predictive abilities of anonymous online chat forums to study health behaviours
  • Previously inaccessible minoritized group

Collaborators

Kathleen Lavoie

Collaborator

Research interests: 

  • Organization transformation programs
  • Health Care Administration System Design (HCIS)
  • Program Implementation: Programs for vulnerable population groups

Mikayla Neeb

Collaborator

Research Interests

  • Responsible use of LLMs, particularly in qualitative research
  • Use of Reddit data for public sentiment analysis
  • Long-term management of chronic pain
  • Food safety

Onur Kilinc

Collaborator

Research Interests: 

  • Large scale scheduling 
  • Intersection of data, optimization and decision making within healthcare information technologies
  • Agentic AI and optimization for real world challenges

Saravana Rajan

Collaborator

Research interests: 

  • AI-Driven operational decision support systems
  • AI-Native data architecture for healthcare systems 
  • Agentic AI systems for healthcare workflows and operations