Director, Pediatric Cancer Data Commons

Dr. Volchenboum was drawn to computers and learned to program at a young age. Despite choosing medicine instead of computer science, he has found novel ways to use technology to enhance medical care, bringing new data-driven approaches to the field.

After an MD and PhD in molecular biology from the Mayo Clinic, he continued his medical career with a residency at Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center where rotations in oncology and stem cell transplant solidified his interest in treating children with cancer and passion for research in neuroblastoma. After completing a clinical fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital, he continued to see patients while participating in their electronic medical record implementation.

Frustrated with the inefficiencies he observed in clinical care and medical research, he began developing new tools for collecting, processing, and managing data to augment care, improve safety, and enhance physician and patient satisfaction – all before receiving any formal training in medical informatics.

Dr. Volchenboum went on to formalize his data science training with a Master’s in Biomedical Informatics from MIT and Harvard Medical School and now is a faculty member at the University of Chicago as Director of the Center for Research Informatics, a nationally recognized group that helps academia acquire, analyze, manage, and store data to streamline their research projects.

He is also leveraging his experience at the intersection of research and bioinformatics as the scientific co-founder of Litmus Health, a company that helps drug development researchers make better go and no-go decisions from a patient’s environment, lifestyle, diet, and activity.

Neubauer Family Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science

Kevin B. Boyd is the Chief Information Officer at the University of Chicago. In 2020, he was honored with the Chicago CIO of the Year ORBIE Award for not-for-profit organizations. His prior experience includes Tribune Company, CNA Financial, United Airlines, Bank One, and Grainger. He also taught as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University for nine years. Boyd holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University and bachelor’s degree from Marquette University.

Matt has a strong record of success in information security management, IT strategy and budget planning, organizational development, and strategic technology architecture. He is skilled at value creation through process improvement, organized optimization, talent development, and technology integration. Proven ability in collaboration, information security, application development management and governance structures. He has over 20 years IT experience, over 10 years in information security and over 12 years in IT management roles. He is experienced in leading web and application development functions and managing the delivery of systems on-time and under budget. He has expertise in staff development, strategic and budget planning, project management, vendor management, process improvement, systems analysis, and technology integration, and is adept at creating scalable internet architectures, managing multiple projects simultaneously. He is also able to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical personnel.

As the Governance, Risk, and Compliance Manager, Jessica assesses the University’s compliance and risk posture and represent the Governance, Risk, and Compliance program in campus forums. She leads the Risk Analysts team, focusing on growing their leadership skills. At a tactical level, she provides consultations on and assessments of IT risks and vulnerabilities and track the progress of enterprise risk remediation plans. At a strategic level, she utilizes a data-driven approach to build stakeholder support in implementing a high-quality Risk Management program in a decentralized environment.

Previously, she managed a Webby award winning team of designers and developers in the University’s Web Services Department. She also served as the Senior Web and Technology Projects Manager at The Field Museum, managing two major redesigns of the museum’s website, with over 4,000+ pages with 2 million annual unique visitors. She launched several mobile apps/exhibition interactives and hired the museum’s first Social Media Strategist, exponentially increasing the museum’s social media presence and brand reach.

Security Engineer, Information Security Architect, IT Services

Kendall is an accomplished, innovative Network Planning and Information Security Engineer with 20 years of demonstrated expertise. She applies advanced technical skills, knowledge, and creativity to protect and advance the University’s brand through reliable network security.

Currently working as an Information Security Engineer at the esteemed University of Chicago, Michael extends his offensive security perspective to the blue team, leveraging his insights to strengthen the incident response process. With a strong focus on engineering cutting-edge solutions and proactively maintaining existing systems, he ensures the constant availability and reliability of the university’s critical infrastructure. Michael’s unwavering commitment to continuous improvement and personal growth fuels his ambition to expand his expertise in areas such as exploit development, reverse engineering, software development, virtualization, and cloud infrastructure.

Garnett joined the Biological Science Division Information Security Office in March 2020 as a Security Engineer. He has over 15 years of IT Experience in higher education. Garnett graduated from Purdue University with a B.S in Information Assurance & System Security. He is currently working as a Cyber Defense Operational Lead engineer for the blue team specializing in Incident Response & Cyber threat management. Garnett combines his critical skill thinking and communication skills to help secure the overall security landscape within the BSD.

Currently manages University of Chicago’s Information Assurance group, a governance, risk, and compliance function of Information Technology.

Proficient in AWS, GCP, and Azure environments. Experienced in managing cloud enablement, including operations, governance, security, and research outreach.

Oversaw and consulted on over 20 innovative proof-of-concept projects, guiding them to successful completion, three of which went on to become significant, clinically-validated studies.

Routinely engaged with individual faculty and faculty governance bodies, as well as with individual IT professionals and IT leadership, on issues ranging from application development, to rapid prototyping, IT risk, and cloud adoption.

Previously, as a User Experience Consultant for IT Services, Cornelia Bailey helped navigate projects in which the outcome is not always well known. This required her to observe how students, faculty and staff behave and to discern what they want. This work takes many forms. Since the mobile experience at and beyond the university has worked well as a focal point of innovation, much of Cornelia’s work focused on mobile concerns. Her efforts include leading a technical steering group focused on mobile best practices, running regular user experience testing groups for IT projects, managing two mobile app challenges and coordinating multiple groups as the University publishes mobile applications. Cornelia’s efforts have also invigorated unique collaborative engagements with the Smart Museum, the Logan Center, and UChicago Medicine. Cornelia is a former programmer and a graduate of IIT’s Institute of Design with an emphasis on healthcare design. In addition to presenting on mobile topics around the university, Cornelia has presented at the Innovation Learning Network, the Center for Innovation at the Mayo Clinic, the Industrial Designers Society of America annual conference and at several HighEdWeb conferences on the topics of security and calendaring.