Dr. Raymond Ng, a professor in the UBC Computer Science Department, has been named a top Academic Data Leader.
The honour comes from Chief Data Officer (CDO) Magazine for the second year in a row. The list names the world's leading experts and visionaries who “inspire the transformative power of data for the greater good” in academia.
Dr. Raymond Ng’s research has been primarily in the areas of data mining, text mining, health informatics, sensor analytics and databases. Since 2016, he has been the Canadian Research Chair on Data Science and Analytics.
He is also the founding director of the UBC Data Science Institute (DSI), with the mandate of advancing data science research in BC. An exemplary collaboration (funded by the BC Provincial Health Services Authority and the Ministry of Health), is a project where the DSI team, alongside BC Cancer Registry experts, co-designed state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing tools using Large Language Models to interpret pathology reports. This innovative approach outshines existing tools in ensuring accurate and interpretable identification of reportable cancers. It is now deployed for actual use in the BC Cancer Registry.
In addition, Dr. Ng is the part-time Chief Informatics Officer of the PROOF (Prevention of Organ Failure) Centre of Excellence. His involvement in genomics research with the PROOF Centre team, has focused on the development of biomarker panels for various conditions related to organ failures in hearts, lungs or kidneys.
Dr. Ng is one of only 3 Canadians named on the list of 90 academic scientists.