Dr. Bhavnani is professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science, director of the Discovery and Innovations through Visual Analytics (DIVA) Laboratory, senior fellow at the Sealy Center on Aging, member of the Institute for Translational Sciences, and adjunct faculty at the School of Biomedical Informatics in UT Houston. Dr. Bhavnani pioneered the use of bipartite network analysis and visualization to model interpretable subtypes of patients and variables in complex chronic conditions such as asthma and COVID-19, and in non-medical determinants of health (NMDoH). His research has earned seven Distinguished Paper Awards, three educator awards, the UT System Rising STARs award, and competitive grants as PI/MPI from the NIH, PCORI, CDC, and TRC4.
At the national level, he was selected as a Presidential Leadership Scholar, served as an advocate for responsible AI on Capitol Hill, was spotlighted in the All of Us Research Roundup and by the AIM-AHEAD consortium, was interviewed by Growing Up in America: The Way It Is (90.1 KPFT), and is a Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (FAMIA). At the global level, his doctoral research from Carnegie Mellon University has been replicated in three countries, and his lab's software libraries have been downloaded more than 25,000 times across all continents.
His current research focuses on synergizing graph neural networks with bipartite networks to address multimodal data complexity while preserving model fairness and interpretability. Such advances aim to accelerate the development of human-centered AI solutions in public health and medicine, including operationalizing precision policies to address the specific NMDoH needs of individuals.
Areas of Interest
- Biomedical Informatics
- Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
- Interpretable Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Precision Public Policy
Affiliations
- McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics, UTHealth Houston (Adjunct Faculty)
- Institute for Translational Sciences, UTMB
- Sealy Center on Aging, UTMB
- Presidential Leadership Scholars Program (Alumnus)