Dr. Chunhua Weng Receives AMIA’s Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics
The Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research congratulates Dr. Chunhua Weng, Professor of Biomedical Informatics and a longtime collaborator and champion of our CTSA mission, on receiving the Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics from the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). Named in honor of the former Director of the National Library of Medicine, the Lindberg Award recognizes exceptional innovation that advances biomedical informatics and improves the nation’s capacity for high-quality clinical research. We spoke with Dr. Weng about what this recognition means and the work that led to it.
Q: What does receiving this award mean to you personally and professionally?
A: Personally, I am truly honored to receive this prestigious award, which reflects the quality and impact of the research I strive to achieve daily. Professionally, it motivates me to continue contributing to advances in my field.
Q: What innovations or body of work did AMIA recognize?
A: This award recognizes my longstanding focus on developing informatics interventions that support the life cycle of clinical evidence - from facilitating scalable clinical trial eligibility screening, recruitment, and clinical phenotyping using electronic health record data to enabling clinical evidence extraction, appraisal, and synthesis.
Q: Is there anyone you would like to acknowledge as part of this milestone?
A: I would like to attribute this award to my mentor, Dr. Thomas Bigger, who always reminded me to stay focused on the needs of clinical researchers. I am also extremely grateful to the Department of Biomedical Informatics, my home department. Several of my DBMI colleagues received this award before me; it is a privilege to be part of such a fantastic scientific environment and to follow in their footsteps. Last but not least, I owe all my research progress to the amazing resources in our CTSA. Nothing that I study - from clinical trial recruitment to clinical phenotyping - can be done without the outstanding collaborators and resources made available by our wonderful CTSA. I cherish it as my second academic home.”
Q: What message would you like readers to take away about the future of informatics?
A: Truly impactful informatics interventions require strong partnerships between informaticians and clinician–scientists. Interdisciplinary collaborations are essential for driving innovations that can significantly benefit healthcare.
Dr. Weng’s work continues to elevate the role of informatics in accelerating high-quality clinical and translational research. Her leadership and collaborative approach exemplify the mission of the Irving Institute and the national CTSA program. We are proud to celebrate this achievement and the impact her innovations bring to the scientific and clinical community.