Senior Research Scientist
Cognitive Studies in Medicine and Public Health, The New York Academy of Medicine, New York, NY

Professor (Adjunct)

• Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University, New York, NY
• Population Health Sciences, Health Informatics, Weill Cornell College of Medicine, New York, NY

E-mail: vpatel.nyam.org
Office: 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, New York, NY, 10029

Degree: PhD, DSc, FRSC
University: McGill University, MA(1980), PhD(1981)

Bio:

Dr. Patel is a Senior Research Scientist, Cognitive Studies in Medicine and Public Health at the New York Academy of Medicine.

She holds a BSc in Biochemistry from Otago University in New Zealand and a MA and Ph.D. in Educational and Cognitive Psychology (Medical Cognition) from McGill University in Montreal. As Professor of Medicine and the director of Cognitive Science Center at McGill, her early research focused on scientific foundations for medical and health education, particularly in cognitive foundations of medical decision-making. Subsequently, she expanded these research activities with an informatics focus (cognitive informatics) at Columbia and Arizona State Universities as well as at University of Texas-Houston, where she was appointed as professor in their departments of Biomedical Informatics. She also had joint or adjunct appointments in the NY Institute of Mental Health (Columbia), Department of Psychology (ASU) and School of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Science (UTH). This allowed her to explore the relationship between Cognitive, behavioral and information sciences in the biomedical domain.

An elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Social Sciences), the American College of Medical Informatics, and the New York Academy of Medicine, she was a recipient of the annual Swedish “Woman of Science” award in 1999. She received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Victoria in 1998, in recognition of her contributions through cognitive studies in the domain of health informatics. She is a past associate editor of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics, and an assistant editor of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, and has served on the editorial boards of Medical Decision Making, Information in Medicine, the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Topics in Cognitive Science and Computers in Biology and Medicine. She is the editor of the special Book series, on Cognitive Informatics in Biomedicine and Healthcare.