John Brownstein, PhD

John Brownstein, PhD, is a Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and is Chief Innovation Officer of Boston Children’s Hospital.  He also directs the Computational Epidemiology Lab and the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator, both at Boston Children’s. He was trained as an epidemiologist at Yale University. John has focused his work on the surveillance, control, and prevention of disease, and has been at the forefront of the development and application of data mining and citizen science to public health. His efforts are leveraged by the  CDC, WHO, DHS, DOD, HHS, and EU, and he has been recognized by the National Library of Congress and the Smithsonian.

In addition to research achievements, John plays an advisory role to numerous agencies on real-time public health surveillance including HHS, DHS, CDC, IOM, WHO and the White House. He was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers–the highest honor bestowed by the U.S.  government to outstanding scientists–the Lagrange Prize for international achievements in complexity sciences, and an Emmy for his contributions to medical reporting during the Covid-19 pandemic at ABC Medical News. His 300 peer-reviewed articles on epidemiology and public health have been reported on widely in the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Nature, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, National Public Radio, and the BBC.