People | OHPEN Lab

Director

You Chen, PhD, FAMIA

Tenured Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Affiliated Appointments: Computer Science; Electrical and Computer Engineering, Vanderbilt University

Dr. Chen directs the OHPEN Lab. His research program has two connected pillars: human-centered, multimodal, and agentic AI for healthcare delivery, and graph AI and foundation models for drug safety, drug repurposing, and therapeutic discovery. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE, 2024) and a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (FAMIA, 2021). He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and serves as Associate Editor of Smart Health.

Google Scholar · VUMC profile · you.chen@vanderbilt.edu

Current members

Research staff

Gracie Piantek

Research Analyst & Project Manager
OHPEN Lab

PhD students

Yubo Feng

PhD Student, Computer Science
Vanderbilt University

2020 – present

Xingtao Lin

PhD Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Vanderbilt University

2026 – present

Junchao Zhou

PhD Student, Computer Science
Vanderbilt University

2026 – present

Graduate trainees

Hangqi Ren

Graduate Student, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Vanderbilt University

2026 – present

Abdullah Ali

Graduate Student (Research Rotation), Biomedical Informatics
Vanderbilt University

2026 – present

Undergraduate & high-school trainees

Josh Ye

Undergraduate, Computer Science
Vanderbilt University

2025 – present

Evan A. Hank

Undergraduate, Computer Science
Vanderbilt University

2026

Siyi Wang

Undergraduate, Computer Science
Vanderbilt University

2026

Kyoungeui Hong

Undergraduate, Computer Science
University of Southern California

2026

Sophie Hong

High-School Student
The Harpeth Hall School

2026

Alumni

PhD graduates

Eugene Jeong, PhD

PhD in Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University (2025)
Dissertation: Data-driven Discovery of Drug-Drug Interactions

Now an NCI training grant-funded Postdoctoral Fellow in Epidemiology at Vanderbilt

Xinmeng Zhang, PhD

PhD in Computer Science, Vanderbilt University (2026)
Dissertation: Workflow-Aware Clinical Prediction Using EHR Clickstreams

Now a Research Scientist at Meta

Postdoctoral alumni

Cheng Gao, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biomedical Informatics (2016 – 2022)

Now a research fellow in industry & government

Graduate alumni

Zejian Zhan

Graduate Student, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Vanderbilt University

2015 – 2017

Sixie Yu

Graduate Student, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Vanderbilt University

2016 – 2017

Barrett Jones

Research Rotation, Biomedical Informatics
Vanderbilt University Medical Center

2019 – 2020 · Student paper, AMIA Annual Symposium 2020

Bob Chen

Research Rotation, Chemical and Physical Biology
Vanderbilt University Medical Center

2020 – 2021 · Paper, JAMIA

Jiayi Fu

Graduate Student, Data Science Institute
Vanderbilt University

2021 – 2022

Xinyu Li

Graduate Student, Computer Science
Vanderbilt University

2021 – 2023

Undergraduate researchers, interns & visiting students

Matthew Draper

Undergraduate Summer Intern, School of Engineering
Stony Brook University

2016

Annie Yin

Undergraduate Summer Intern, Computer Science
Duke University

2017 · Student paper, AMIA Informatics Summit 2018

Arthur Xin

Undergraduate Summer Intern, Mathematics and Computer Science
Case Western Reserve University

2017

Thomas Li

Undergraduate Summer Intern, Computer Science
Duke University

2017 · Student paper, AMIA Informatics Summit 2018

Charlotte Zuber

Undergraduate Summer Intern, Computer Science
Rutgers University

2018 · Podium, MedInfo 2019

Cindy Kim

Undergraduate Summer Intern, Mathematics
Vanderbilt University

2018 · Podium, AMIA Clinical Informatics 2019

Patrick Li

Summer Intern — Saratoga High School (2018);
Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania (2020)

2018, 2020 · AMIA high-school scholarship; JMIR Medical Informatics paper

Peter Ju

Undergraduate Summer Intern, Computer Science
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

2019 · Poster, AMIA Informatics Summit 2020

Hannah Mannering

Undergraduate Summer Intern, Computer Science
Loyola University

2020 · Paper, Journal of Medical Internet Research

Nicholas Skoufis

Visiting Student
Vanderbilt University

2023 · Paper, Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 2024

Ruiyan Ma

Undergraduate Student, Mathematics
Vanderbilt University

2023 – 2025 · Paper, MedInfo 2025