The Dawn of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and the Future of the Academic Health Center (AHC)

Brian D. Athey, Ph.D. is the Michael A. Savageau Endowed Professor and Founding Chair of the Gilbert S. Omenn Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics (DCMB) at the University of Michigan (UM) Medical School (UMMS); where he also is a Professor of Psychiatry. He currently serves AI Advisor to the UM  Medical School Dean’s Office. Dr. Athey has served as Michigan Medicine Chief Information Officer (CIO); and the Medical School Academic Informatics lead (Assoc. Dean equivalent), 2006-2011. In addition, he served as co-founder and co-director of the UM-wide Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) from 2015-2018. He served as elected chair of the Endowment of the Basic Sciences (EBS), coordinating the 9 Medical School basic science departments  from 2020-2023.

Dr. Athey worked (1995-2001) for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the Defense Sciences Office (DSO) and the NIH Office of the Director, and the NIH Chief Information Officer (2008-2011).  Brian is an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (FACMI) and to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS). He was awarded the Peace Fellowship from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS.org) in 2002-2005 for his work with DARPA to combat biological terrorism.

Trained as a biophysicist, as a graduate student Athey proposed the double helical crossed-linker model for chromatin, now considered by most to be its correct structural motif. On chromatin, he performed the first successful and published cryo-electron microscopy experiment—now a standard technique worldwide. Athey is a recognized  expert in biomedical optics, and he shared a laboratory for 10 years with the inventor of off-axis holography, the late Professor Emmet Leith, a recipient of the US National Medal of Science. During that time, he performed the first real-time live cell 2-photon confocal imaging experiment, done in the laboratory of Nobelist Professor Gérard Mourou.

Dr. Athey has more than 30 years of experience in trans-disciplinary team science-based leadership experience as overall Principal Investigator of national biomedical informatics and computational sciences centers and consortia. These include the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Visible Human Project, the DARPA Telepathology and Virtual Solider Projects, and the NIH National Center for Integrative Biomedical Informatics (NCIBI).  He has trained or co-mentored over 16 MS, 20 PhD, and 8 postdoctoral fellows, and mentored 6 faculty K-awardees--all of whom are all enjoying successful careers in academia, industry, and government service. He has over 130 peer-reviewed papers and conference proceedings. He currently has over 15 issued patents (US, Europe, Asia), with over 40 more US and international in the provisional and patent examiner review pipeline.

Dr.Athey has been an advisor to over 10 biotechnology companies in the last 30 years, including SAB and corporate advisor roles. He served as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Assurex Health (Mason, Ohio) and as Head of Science and Technology from 2011-2018; this company was acquired by Myriad Genetics (Salt Lake City, UT), and now operates as Myriad Neuroscience. He is Co-founder and Chief Science and Technology Officer of Phenomics Health Inc. (Ann Arbor, MI), a company whose mission is to provide next-generation medication management services to patients, physicians, healthcare systems, assisted care systems, and pharmacies.