Caption: From left - Uduak Ndoh, vice chancellor and deputy chief information officer for Pitt's schools of the health sciences; Mark Henderson, Pitt’s chief information officer; Dominic Delmolino, vice president, worldwide public sector technology and innovation at Amazon Web Services; and Ryan Varley, senior associate athletic director, CFO.
By Shannon Turgeon
Photography by Aimee Obidzinski
In a partnership that will bring access to the latest machine learning and AI technology to the schools of the health sciences, the University of Pittsburgh and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have established the East Coast’s first Cloud Innovation Center (CIC).
On April 23, the Health Sciences and Sports Analytics Cloud Innovation Center, powered by AWS, officially launched at the center’s headquarters in the Tech Building on Fifth Avenue.
The Pitt-AWS CIC is the first partnership to focus on health sciences and sports analytics. Student interns will work closely with the University’s schools of the health sciences and the Department of Athletics to solve real-world issues in health care and sports via AWS’s cloud computing and AI tools.
At the launch event, Pitt faculty and students gathered with representatives from AWS to learn more about the Pitt-AWS CIC and hear from project stakeholders.
“The cutting-edge technology that AWS has in machine learning and AI will give our researchers the ability to advance their work and hopefully improve health care outcomes,” said Uduak Ndoh, vice chancellor and deputy chief information officer, health sciences. “AWS is an innovator, and they are providing not only the expertise, but also the technology to help us drive the work that we do. It gives us an added toolbox.”
In one planned project, AWS’s AI and machine learning technology will analyze electronic health record data and provide decision support to help predict health outcomes.
Students will be at the heart of the Pitt-AWS CIC.
“The University of Pittsburgh is one of the best universities not just in the nation, but in the world, for health sciences and sports analytics. So, get ready, because we’re going to start building, and we’re going to start building fast,” said Vince Niedermayer, one of five students hired as summer interns.
Interns will have access to AWS’s training and technology, including services like Amazon SageMaker and Bedrock. They will use these tools while working alongside industry experts to find solutions for issues in the health care and sports industries.
The partnership between Pitt and AWS was approximately two and a half years in the making. Establishing the Pitt-AWS CIC involved collaboration among faculty and staff across University groups, including Pitt Information Technology, the athletics department and the schools of the health sciences.
Jamie Butler, director of solutions architecture for education, state and local government at AWS and a Pitt alumnus, was eager to help foster the connection between AWS and Pitt.
“With the superpowers of Pitt—the health sciences and athletics—we can do something really incredible together,” Butler said.
For more information, visit https://technology.pitt.edu/cic.