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/

Hudson is a native of Coppell, TX who completed his B.S. in Biomedical Sciences and a Minor in Business at Auburn University. He then matriculated to Baylor College of Medicine where he received his Doctor of Medicine. Hudson is a current General Surgery resident at Vanderbilt University Medical Center with plans to pursue fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery. Hudson’s interests are in translational and clinical informatics, specifically with applications to thoracic oncology, operative techniques, and surgical resident education.

Google Scholar: Hudson M. Holmes, MD
LinkedIn: Hudson M. Holmes, MD

Kevin Guo is a PhD student in the Department of biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University. Prior to his PhD, Kevin completed his BS in Computer Science at the University of Southern California in 2025 and interned in the Vanderbilt Biomedical Informatics Summer Program in 2023.

Kevin's work is funded by the National Library of Medicine T15 Training Grant and the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. His research is broadly interested in creating robust and trustworthy machine learning systems for healthcare. Currently, he is exploring LLM uncertainty in clinical decision making as well as synthetic data to ensure data privacy and algorithmic fairness in biomedical data sharing.

Personal site can be found at: kevin-guo.dev
Google Scholar: scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=3VM1a_oAAAAJ

Jasleen received a bachelor of science degree from West Virginia University (May 2020) and a master of science degree (Aug. 2022) at West Virginia University. Jasleen was an application developer in the Division of Infectious Diseases at VUMC. Her mentor is Dr. Adi Bejan, and her funding is provided through one of his research grants. She is pursuing a PhD and joined DBMI in Fall 2025.

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=K0Ihje0AAAAJ&hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasleen-gandhi/

Mike Enger, MS, is a PhD student in the Department of Biomedical Informatics, supported by the National Library of Medicine’s T15 training grant. He earned his MS in Health Informatics & Analytics from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (August 2024) after completing a BS in Psychology at Appalachian State University (August 2018). He joined DBMI in Fall 2025.

Mike also maintains a part-time affiliation with RTI International, where he supports a CDC-funded research network that conducts neuromuscular disease surveillance using electronic health record data.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mike-enger/
ResearchGate: researchgate.net/profile/Mike-Enger-2
RTI Experts page: rti.org/expert/mike-enger

Nikita Amanna, MS is a PhD student within the Department of Biomedical Informatics. She has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a Master’s degree in Data Science from the University of Virginia. She worked at Vanderbilt University Medical Center as a Statistical Genetic Analyst in the Genetic Epidemiology Lab, headed by Dr. Melinda Aldrich.

Nikita is funded by the National Library of Medicine T15 Training Grant. She is interested in applying novel computational methods to assist in early detection, screening, diagnosis, and care of disease.

Ransom Wyse, MPH, CPH, is an epidemiologist, Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellow, and part-time DrPH student at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Since late November 2024, Ransom has been working on Dr. Alvin Jeffery’s team as a Research Term Professional in the functional role of Program Manager. His general job requirements include Program Management, i.e. planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific goals, an ability to monitor costs, expenses and revenue as well as the ability to manage those costs and expenses in relation to budgeted amounts, Process Improvement, i.e. identify, analyze and improve upon existing business processes for optimization and to meet standards of quality, Peer Leadership, i.e. the ability to show leadership and influence people of equal rank in an effort to accomplish team goals, Networking, i.e. build relationships through industry contacts, professional organizations and individuals, and Quality Management, i.e. develop a systematic process of checking to see whether a process or service is meeting specific requirements. Ransom has been working on aspects of our DP1 grant, “Framework to Accelerate Substance Use Disorder Genetic Studies through Customizable, EHR-Based Precision Phenotyping,” including writing an article regarding natural language processing and writing a brief communication comparing patient survey output to clinical information in the EHR. His work directly contributes to the mission of VUMC via his expertise; his analytics and interpretations of our research findings will inform best-practices for SUD identification in an at-risk population, which can be used by the scientific and clinical community to improve patient healthcare. 

PubMed

Dr. Joshua Landman is a VGM postdoctoral fellow and a research fellow in the Below Lab with broad interests in data science and biomedical informatics, relating to applying both novel and extant methods toward building models that predict a wide variety of outcomes. He joined the Below Lab in 2023 and the VGM Training Program in 2025. Dr. Landman’s current research focuses on developing machine learning and statistical methods for multi-omics approaches to gene discovery for a wide variety of phenotypes. His long-term goal is to develop a research program integrating electronic health records, and multi-omics data to develop clinical outcome prediction models that encompass the broadest possible array of factors that contribute to health.