Chief Navigator
AJ is committed to democratizing generative AI (GenAI) and building equitable Learning Health System (LHS) units to advance global health equity. He pioneered the concepts of “LHS units” for the scalable implementation of specific tasks within LHSs, and “theoretical LLMs” for preclinically validated large language models fine-tuned with synthetic patient data. These innovations enable doctors to responsibly use GenAI in predictive healthcare and empower navigators to effectively monitor patient care quality—helping large populations achieve timely, accurate diagnoses and personalized treatments. AJ also serves as a mentor in the NIH AI consortium AIM-AHEAD, supporting the training of the next generation of AI-empowered healthcare professionals.
From 2011 to 2016, AJ served on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Region IX Health Equity Council, where he advocated for the recognition of navigators as essential health professionals. He has long focused on developing technologies to scale the impact of navigators, and in 2024, he introduced a breakthrough agentic GenAI system design capable of accurately predicting all diseases—an essential advancement for automating the monitoring of care quality and scaling patient navigation.
From 2013 to 2014, AJ served on the Consumer Technology Workgroup of the HHS Federal Advisory Committee on Health IT Standards, where he contributed to the recommendation of using APIs for patient-driven health record exchange—a standard that later became a core requirement under the 21st Century Cures Act and is now widely used to integrate patient data from EHR systems. He was the first to simulate a complete end-to-end BlueButton data exchange via API, winning the national developer challenge hosted by the U.S. HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC).
Earlier in his career, AJ developed the core semantic search technologies at Healthline.com, enabling health search engines to reach over 100 million monthly users. His public health search engine project earned him a prize in the myHealthyPeople Developer Challenge hosted by the U.S. HHS. He also led the development of genomic software for personalized medicine at Hyseq and collaborated with Nobel Laureate Dr. Barry Marshall to promote the groundbreaking H. pylori theory.
AJ completed postdoctoral training in Immunology at Harvard Medical School and the Duke University School of Medicine. He earned his PhD from the University of Utah and holds a BS from Fudan University.