Alexandra “Allie” Williams, MD, is a VGM postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pediatric Cardiology with Dr. Prince Kannankeril as her mentor. Allie’s research focus is on investigating cardiac genetics underlying sudden unexplained infant death. Specifically, Allie is interested in analyzing large genetic databases and data sets to evaluate how genetic variation impacts disease presentation, outcomes and treatment response in our pediatric cardiology patients.

Rory Tinker, MD is a VGM postdoctoral research fellow trainee in the Department of Biomedical Informatics with Lisa Bastarache as his mentor. Rory is originally from London, U.K., where he attended medical school and conducted an integrated BSc in Neuroscience. In 2025 Rory completed his residency in Pediatric Genetics. His principal academic interest is in how genetic technology can identify, diagnose and ultimately treat rare disorders.

Dr. Brian Tran is originally from Georgia and studied Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech. After graduation, he worked at Epic as a Technical Services Analyst for several years, which is where most of his clinical informatics experience originated. His main work at Epic was focused in radiology, imaging decision support and PACS integrations. He regularly worked with several different health care systems to maintain, troubleshoot and implement new features for their radiology systems.

After his time at Epic, he received his MD at Wake Forest and finished his anesthesiology residency at University of Miami in 2025. Dr. Tran is currently an anesthesiologist just south of Seattle. He has general interest in AI and its potential in health care. From the program and colleagues, he is looking forward to learning more about the management perspective of implementing clinical informatics related projects in a health care system.

Dr. Austin Griffin is a third-year cardiology fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He grew up in Ohio and completed both his Internal Medicine residency and chief year at the Cleveland Clinic before moving to Nashville for cardiology fellowship training. His path in medicine has been shaped by a deep commitment to patient care, curiosity about systems-level improvement, and the desire to make health care more effective and humane. Before medical school, his work in global health policy and pharmaceutical operations shaped his drive to improve health care organization and delivery. During residency, he partnered with the informatics department and led efforts to streamline cardiology discharge workflows. These experiences helped him discover that informatics was a powerful bridge between clinical insight and health care systems improvement at scale.

Looking forward, Dr. Griffin is excited to collaborate with colleagues who are passionate about using data science and AI to solve clinical problems. In particular, he is eager to learn more about natural language processing, predictive analytics and multimodal data integration to ethically improve documentation, consult triage and arrhythmia risk prediction in patients with heritable cardiomyopathies. He is an affable team player who's thrilled to join this program and hopes his unique perspective will add great variety to the group's discourse. (Joined Fall 2025)

Dr. Peter Samuel grew up in Richmond, Va. and completed his undergraduate studies in bioinformatics. During that time he was exposed to the blend of biology/medicine and technology. He completed his medical education at Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg, Va. while continuing  research in bioinformatics. He then completed a residency in internal medicine in Charlotte, N.C. at Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center.

During his training, Dr. Samuel sat on several of the hospital’s health IT committees and achieved Physician Builder certification with EPIC. He worked on many projects involving improving patient care delivery, governance and workflow optimization.

Dr. Samuel works clinically as a hospitalist during fellowship and is completing a master of science degree in Applied Clinical Informatics. He hopes to pursue a career in operational clinical informatics after fellowship, serving patients and supporting colleagues. He has a specific interest in clinical decision support, ambient scribing technology and precision medicine. He is also the first-year clinical informatics fellow at VUMC (Fall 2025).

Dr. Mollie Hobensack is a National Library of Medicine Postdoctoral Fellow supported by the Biomedical Informatics Training Grant (T15LM007450). Her research focuses on leveraging applied clinical informatics and electronic health record (EHR) data to support nurses in delivering patient-centered care for older adults.

Dr. Hobensack began her career on a geriatrics medical-surgical unit before pursuing her PhD at Columbia University School of Nursing. Her dissertation explored how social factors extracted from narrative notes using natural language processing could be integrated into machine learning models to predict hospitalizations among older adults in home healthcare. During her doctoral studies, she developed a strong interest in implementing and evaluating nursing informatics tools in clinical practice. Following her PhD, she served as Clinical Program Manager of Quality and Informatics in the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Mount Sinai Health System. In this role, she collaborated with frontline clinicians to design EHR tools and dashboards to track key performance indicators and advance quality improvement initiatives.

Through her postdoctoral training, Dr. Hobensack aims to develop a synergistic program of research at the intersection of clinical workflows, operational needs, and applied clinical informatics to enhance the nursing delivery of patient-centered care for older adults.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MFEXPecAAAAJ&hl=en
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mollie-hobensack-8881ab137

Dr. Asiah Ruffin is a Medical Informatics Postdoctoral Fellow at the VA Tennessee Valley Health Care System and a master’s student in Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She joined DBMI in Fall 2025. Her research interests center on leveraging electronic health record (EHR) data and exploring the transformative potential of artificial intelligence to improve healthcare delivery and outcomes.

Dr. Ruffin earned a PhD in Nursing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing. Her doctoral research focused on enhancing occupational well-being among nursing leaders and administrators, with a dissertation that examined the feasibility of a wellness intervention for hospital-based nurse leaders in rural Alabama.

With recognized expertise in translating complex concepts into engaging and accessible formats, Dr. Ruffin is skilled in scholarly communication and the design of visually compelling educational materials. She is also committed to cultivating collaborative, growth-oriented work environments that foster innovation and shared success.

As the founder of AWAKEN, a Substack publication dedicated to personal and professional development, Dr. Ruffin integrates themes of well-being, leadership, and purposeful living to empower individuals in pursuit of balanced, meaningful success.

Google Scholar Link: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=xqsjGVkAAAAJ
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asiahruffin1922/