Speakers

Dr. Duran is the Senior Advisor on Data Science, Analytics and Systems to the Director of the National Institutes of Minority and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health.  She focuses on implicit and explicit biases in data curation, AI designs, algorithm development, and the impacts on communities.   AI and ethics focus her efforts, and she strives to increase underrepresented populations capacity to utilize big data, the cloud and data science resources.

She has developed the ScHARe (Science Collaborative for Health disparities and Artificial intelligence bias Reduction) Research Collaboration Cloud Platform focusing on social science data, including social determinants of health, to better understand health disparities and health inequities.  ScHARe provides confidential and private workspaces to conduct research using the cloud.  The ScHARe data repository offers researchers a platform for social science research and an opportunity to fulfill the mandated data management and sharing policy in a cloud space utilizing common data elements.  In addition, monthly Think-a-Thons enables cloud instructions for novice users and launches collaborative AI research on health disparities, health care and health outcomes.

She also focuses on the inclusion of social determinant of health (SDOH) in all human research to better apply diagnostics, treatments, and interventions to reduce health disparities.  Her countless hours are focused on the standardized measurement and metrics of SDoH.

Prior to this role, she has been the director of science policy, scientific planning and data analytics for over 20 years.  She is an author, ScholarGPS top .05% of health equity scholars, Flywheel Award nominee, and received three HHS Secretarial Awards and numerous NIH awards exemplifying her leadership skills and ability to advance science.  Prior to government, she was a principal investigator, researcher for the National Coalition of Hispanic Health, an advocate for healthy equity, a professor, and a high school teacher.  She is passionate about democratizing data and upskilling women and diverse populations to become leaders of AI, cloud computing and data science.