Hongfang Liu, Ph.D.
AUSTIN, Texas — Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin has announced the appointment of Hongfang Liu, Ph.D., as the inaugural chair of the newly established Department of Quantitative and Systems Health Sciences, effective May 18. The department will officially launch on Aug. 31, 2026. Liu will hold the Carolyn and Kenneth Shine Endowed Chair in Artificial Intelligence and also serve as chief translational AI and informatics officer for UT Dell Medical Center.
Liu joins UT Dell Medical Center from senior leadership roles at UTHealth Houston and Mayo Clinic, where she built internationally recognized programs in biomedical informatics, translational AI, digital health and real-world data science.
Liu’s work has focused on transforming large-scale biomedical data into actionable knowledge to advance precision medicine and improve patient outcomes. Her recruitment marks a major milestone in UT Austin’s vision to build a next-generation academic health system that is seamless, digitally enabled and AI-native.
Liu will lead the development of a world-class academic department integrating artificial intelligence, data science and systems-level approaches to advance discovery, strengthen healthcare innovation and support interdisciplinary training across computational and translational medicine.
“Dr. Liu is one of the nation’s foremost leaders in translational AI and biomedical informatics,” said Claudia F. Lucchinetti, M.D., dean of Dell Medical School and senior vice president for medical affairs at UT Austin. “She has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to build transformative programs at institutional and national scale, from enterprise AI infrastructure and digital health innovation to multi-institutional research collaborations that directly improve patient care. Her leadership will be instrumental in shaping the future of AI-enabled medicine at UT Austin.”
At Mayo Clinic, Liu led major initiatives in biomedical informatics, cancer data science and digital health, including development of enterprise-scale data platforms and the Clinical Language Analytics Service Infrastructure, an AI-driven clinical natural language processing platform that supported more than 800 research projects and over 50 NIH-funded studies.
She also led the internationally recognized Open Health Natural Language Processing consortium, which established widely adopted open-source tools for biomedical NLP and accelerated AI applications in real-world healthcare settings worldwide.
Since joining UTHealth Houston in 2023 through a prestigious CPRIT Established Investigator Award, Liu has expanded leadership across major UT System AI and real-world data initiatives. Through the UT System Health Intelligence Platform, she leads collaborative efforts to establish unified data infrastructure across all UT health institutions and directs the UT REAL-Health AI Pilot Program to accelerate responsible AI deployment in healthcare.
Liu has maintained continuous federal funding since 2003 and currently serves as a principal leader of ReCARDO, a $27.2 million National Institute on Aging initiative focused on harmonizing real-world clinical data to accelerate Alzheimer’s disease and dementia research across 10 leading institutions nationwide.
Liu has made significant contributions across bioinformatics, software engineering, big data analytics, cancer research, epidemiology, clinical research and healthcare delivery. She is a pioneer in developing machine learning and big data techniques for biomedical and clinical natural language processing — a branch of AI that focuses on empowering computers with the ability to understand text.
In her role as CTAIIO, Liu will provide strategic academic leadership across clinical care, research, education and operational innovation, helping integrate AI throughout UT Dell Medical Center and Dell Medical School.
“Healthcare is entering a transformative era where artificial intelligence, computational medicine and human-centered care must evolve together,” Liu said. “UT Austin and Dell Medical School have a unique opportunity to build a truly integrated academic health ecosystem that combines technological innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, discovery science and clinical excellence to improve health for individuals and populations alike.