This document summarizes the establishment and activities of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences (ICHS) at UCSF. The ICHS aims to bring together researchers across disciplines to advance computational approaches in biology, healthcare, and population health. Key activities include recruiting faculty jointly with other departments, enhancing infrastructure like high-performance computing, and developing educational initiatives in areas like bioinformatics and clinical informatics. The ICHS is led by interim co-directors and advised by an executive committee representing different areas of the university.

1. Institute for Computational Health
Sciences
Neil Risch & Michael Fischbach,
Interim Co-Directors

2. Target - Vision
To coalesce an exceptional academic
community that will create new computational
approaches to address major questions
across the spectrum of translation, from
biology to healthcare to population health.
To enable UCSF to be at the forefront of
innovations involving the merger of big data,
new devices, biomedical sciences and health
that will change the practice and delivery of
health care

3. Plan
1.Launch a Center that will mature to an
ORU (or equivalent) with associated
administration, space, computational
resources & data infrastructure
2.Recruit faculty in collaboration with other
departments and/or with primary affiliation
with ORU
3.Define and conduct educational activities
4.Enhance computational and informatics
infrastructure

4. Process (thus far)
Identified by faculty as
a priority in the Human
Biology initiative
(January 2011)
Task Force on
Bioinformatics
convened
(June 2011)
External advisors
convened and report
received
(December 2011)
Taskforce reports
completed; interim Co-
Directors selected
(May 2012)
Business Plan
presented to CEC
(June 2012)
Start up funds provided
by EVCP
(July 2012)
Executive Committee
identified and formed
(July 2012)
Monthly EC meetings
start
(August 2012)
First recruitment
partnering
(August 2012)
Launch Recruitment for
Education Coordinator
(June 2013)

5. ICHS Administration
• Interim Co-Directors
– Michael Fischbach and Neil Risch
• Interim Business Manager
– Lisa Woldin
• Strategic Support
– Terri O’Brien
– Mini Kahlon
• Administrative Support
– Jenny Banaszek

6. ICHS Executive Committee
• Nancy Adler
• Patsy Babbitt
• Michael Blum
• Claire Brindis
• Rahul Deo
• Stuart Gansky
• Matt Jacobson
• Ajay Jain
• Sarah Nelson
• Katie Pollard
• Andrej Sali
• William Seeley
• Mark Segal
• Ida Sim

7. ICHS Executive Committee
Ex Officio
• Julie Auger
• David Haussler
• Susanne Hildebrand-
Zanki
• Sorena Nadaf
• Keith Yamamoto

8. ICHS EC Subcommittees
Recruitment Education
Infrastructure
Clinical
Informatics

9. Recruitment Partnering
• Recruitment Subcommittee
– Katie Pollard (Chair)
– Michael Blum
– Matt Jacobson
– Bill Seeley
– Mark Segal
• Completed Co-Recruitments
– Shawn Douglas (CMP)
– Xiao Hu (Nursing)
– Steven Altshuler and Loni Wu (Pharm Chem)
– Michael Keiser (IND)
– Sourav Bandyopadhyay (BTS)
– Brian Shoichet (Pharm Chem)

10. Education Initiatives
• Education Subcommittee
– Patsy Babbitt (Chair)
– Matt Jacobson
– Catherine Lucey
– Ida Sim
• Plan to recruit education coordinator to work
with Patsy to lead new initiatives
• Plan to infuse more
bioinformatics/biostatistics training in all
graduate and professional programs through
formal and informal coursework

11. Clinical Informatics
• Clinical Inforamtics Subcommittee:
Ida Sim (Chair) Russ Cucina
Nancy Adler Adams Dudley
Michael Blum Yao Sun
Claire Brindis Joel White
• Goal to expand the presence of clinical
informatics on campus through targeted
recruitments
• Additional training (master’s program?) in
clinical informatics under discussion

12. Infrastructure Subcommittee
• Sorena Nadaf (Chair)
• Mary Beth Baker
• Josh Baker LePain
• Karen Brungardt
• Brad Dispensa
• Tom Ferrin
• Michael Fischbach
• Joe Hesse
• Richard Johnson
• Pui Kwok
• Neil Risch
• Andrej Sali
• Saunak Sen
• Vivek Swarnakar

13. Infrastructure Coordination
• Sent out survey to campus to determine
needs in high performance computing
• Constructed plan for additional consolidation
and expansion of HPC on campus as needs
evolve, especially in the area of genomics
– IHG Cluster (Minnesota St. Data Center)
– QB3 Cluster
– Cancer Center Cluster

14. New Director Recruitment
• Currently underway
• Search committee formed; advertisements
posted, outreach letters sent
• Applications received plus letters of inquiry
• 2 candidates interviewed to date