Funding Agency Panel
2023 ACM-BCB Conference – September 3-6, 2023 (Houston, TX)

James Luo, PhD

Program Director
Division of Cardiovascular Science
NHLBI, NIH

Biosketch

Dr. Luo’s background and experience encompass molecular biology, genomics, clinical research, and data sciences. He earned his Ph.D. degree in molecular and cell biology in 1996 from University of Memphis, Tennessee. He conducted research on gene regulation and expression in central nervous system at National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), NIH. He had conducted clinical trials and bioinformatics development since 1998. He was trained at Stanford University in a data mining and machine learning program.
While at NHLBI as a Program Director, He has facilitated the generation of high impact results in the genetics and genomics research community through the management of the TOPMed CORE Labs and Informatics Research Center (IRC). Under his management and leadership, the TOPMed IRC has jointly called over 185,694 whole genome sequence (WGS) with well-phenotyped individuals and generated 959 million genetic variants. The TOPMed Imputation Server has imputed over 54.8 million genomes supporting over 10,132 investigators worldwide. He has represented NHLBI on trans-NIH and federal interagency committees, such as Trans-NIH BioMedical Informatics Coordinating Committee (BMIC), NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS), NIH common fund program: Somatic Cell Gene Editing program, precision nutrition, Alliance of Genome Resource, and inter agency (NSF) program: Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science. He is the NHLBI program contact of several FOA led by NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS). He has oversaw projects with over $100 million total budget annually.
Throughout his career over the years, he has won a number of awards. One of the projects at NCI, the Rembrand project, is the finalist of 2005 Service to America Medals Award, an honor highlighting those who have made significant contributions to our country for America's dedicated federal workforce. One of the competitors for this award was NASA’s Mars rover project. Selected by NIH Director, Dr. Francis S. Collins, he receive a 2016 NIH Director's Award. In 2015. The Secretary Sylvia Burwell of US Department of Health and Human Services presented him the US Department of Health and Human Services Innovation Awards. In 2009, he received Excellenc.Gov Award: Best Overall Award Winner. In 2008, selected by trans-NIH Blueprint Directors, he received NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research Directors Award for Significant Achievement in managing NITRC project.

Presentation Title: The NHLBI Trans-omics for Precision Medicine Program (TOPMed)

Veerasamy “Ravi” Ravichandran, PhD

Program Director
Division of Digestive Diseases & Nutrition
NIDDK, NIH

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As a Program Director in the Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the NIDDK, Dr. Ravichandran oversees a portfolio of research grants that use systems biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, and data science to study both the normal biological processes and the wide spectrum of diseases impacting the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, including the alimentary GI tract, hepatobiliary system, exocrine pancreas, as well as nutrition and obesity research.
Dr. Ravichandran's responsibilities encompass a range of activities, including data curation, sharing, access, reproducibility, security, analysis, harmonization, quality metrics, standards, and visualization. Additionally, he serves as a representative for NIDDK on NIH-wide committees that are involved in data science initiatives.
For more information, visit Dr. Ravichandran's webpage

Presentation Title: Enhancing NIH Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Plans through Large Language Models (LLMs)