Researcher + Entrepreneur (ML + Biomedicine)
I research how to enable natural language processing (NLP) on new and dynamic problems by developing generative means of structuring data via large language models (LLMs) and knowledge graphs. I use these technologies to structure clinical data and biomedical research , enabling clinicians to customizably curate structured data from any unstructured text.
I have collaborated with researchers, developers, and clinicians while working at Enveda Biosciences, Facebook, GSK, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and Intermountain Healthcare.
Education
Aug 2018 - Dec 2023
Ph.D. in Computational Science & Engineering
2017 - 2018
M.S. in Mathematics
GPA: 4.00/4.00
2010 - 2016
B.S. in Applied & Computational Mathematics
Magna Cum Laude, University Honors
Overall GPA: 3.96/4.00
Applied and Computational Mathematics Emphasis (ACME)
Industry Experience
Sept 2022 - Present
Building an LLM-based assistant to provide personalized navigation of medical bills and healthcare costs
Summer 2022
Mentor:
Daniel Domingo-Fernandez,
David Healey,
Joe Davison
Performed systematic survey + implementation fo 20+ entity linking NLP models to improve accuracy evidence-based compound prioritization
Summer 2021
Mentor:
Minhazul Islam Sk
Designed and trained transformer-based semantic search document retrieval system to improve efficiency of customer support agents
Summer 2020
Mentor:
Anne Cocos
Built model jointly embed free-text entity mentions with structured entity knowledge graph for 30M research articles/abstracts and KG with 5M edges. Developed end-to-end pipeline to download, preprocess, and identify high-quality entity links for biomedical entities in 30M research articles. Engineered parallel model training workflow on distributed supercomputing cluster utilizing 10,000+ CPU cores and dozens of GPUs.
Summer 2018
Mentor:
Andrew Blevins
Developed and deployed recommender system to infer biological mechanism of action and repurposing potential of 1M+ compounds
May 2016 - May 2018
Mentor:
Andy Merrill
Built and deployed models to forecast individual patient risk of chronic disease onset and long-term complex care from EHR and environmental data. Published in IEEE ICHI (2017) and AJRCCM (2018).
Academic Research Experience
Aug 2019 - Present Aug. 2016
Member of the Laboratory of Pathology Dynamics where we use machine learning to build tools that identify and prioritize cures and optimize care for neurodegenerative diseases.
Aug 2018 - May 2019
Mentor:
Jimeng Sun
Conducted research in predicting chronic disease outcomes from electronic health records (EHR) and free-text clinical notes.
Jan 2017 - Aug 2018 Jan. 2013
Advisor:
Jeffrey Humpherys
Developed models to predict individual onset of chronic conditions from patient electronic health records (EHR). Published in IEEE ICHI (2017, 2018).
Honors and Awards
2018
National Science Foundation GRFP Honorable Mention
Learning to Prescribe Optimal Disease Treatment via Machine Learning
2015
Dean and Helen Robinson Scholarship
Scholarship given to outstanding undergraduates in mathematics for Putnam Mathematics competition
2016
BYU University Honors
Awarded to undergraduates who write a thesis complete requirements in leadership, service, and cross-disciplinary scholarship.
2010-2016
BYU Heritage Scholarship
Full-tuition merit based scholarship for incoming students
2011
Amberly Rupp "Circle of Honor" Essay Contest Award
1st-place in university-wide essay contest
2010
National Merit Scholarship
Merit-based scholarship awarded top <1% of incoming university students
Selected Publications*
22nd Workshop on Biomedical Natural Language Processing (BioNLP). Toronto, Canada, 2023.
46th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR). Taipei, Taiwan, 2023.
@inproceedings{kartchner2023biosift,
author = {Kartchner, David and Al-Hussaini, Irfan and Turner, Haydn and Deng, Jennifer and Lohiya, Shugham and Bathala, Prasanth and Mitchell, Cassie},
title = {BioSift: A Dataset for Filtering Biomedical Abstracts for Drug Repurposing and Clinical Meta-Analysis},
year = {2023},
maintitle = {SIGIR},
booktitle = {46th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval},
}
AI (AI). Online, 2022.
@article{kartchner2022rule,
title={Rule-Enhanced Active Learning for Semi-Automated Weak Supervision},
author={Kartchner, David and Nakajima An, Davi and Ren, Wendi and Zhang, Chao and Mitchell, Cassie S},
journal={AI},
volume={3},
number={1},
pages={211--228},
year={2022},
publisher={MDPI}
}
Kevin McCoy,
Sateesh Gudapati,
Lawrence He,
Elaina Horlander,
David Kartchner,
Soham Kulkarni,
Nidhi Mehra,
Jayant Prakash,
Helena Thenot,
Sri Vivek Vanga,
Abigail Wagner,
Brandon White,
Cassie Mitchell
Pharnaceutics (Pharm). Online, 2021.
@article{mccoy2021biomedical,
title={Biomedical Text Link Prediction for Drug Discovery: A Case Study with COVID-19},
author={McCoy, Kevin and Gudapati, Sateesh and He, Lawrence and Horlander, Elaina and Kartchner, David and Kulkarni, Soham and Mehra, Nidhi and Prakash, Jayant and Thenot, Helena and Vanga, Sri Vivek and others},
journal={Pharmaceutics},
volume={13},
number={6},
pages={794},
year={2021},
publisher={Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute}
}
IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (ICHI). New York City, NY, USA, 2018.
@inproceedings{christensen2018machine,
title={Machine learning methods for disease prediction with claims data},
author={Christensen, Tanner and Frandsen, Abraham and Glazier, Seth and Humpherys, Jeffrey and Kartchner, David},
booktitle={2018 IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (ICHI)},
pages={467--4674},
year={2018},
organization={IEEE}
}
Benjamin D. Horne,
Elizabeth A. Joy,
Michelle G. Hofmann,
Per H. Gesteland,
John B. Cannon,
Jacob S. Lefler,
Denitza P. Blagev,
E. Kent Korgenski,
Natalie Torosyan,
Grant I. Hansen,
David Kartchner,
C. Arden Pope III
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM). New York, NY, USA, 2018.
@article{horne2018short,
title={Short-term elevation of fine particulate matter air pollution and acute lower respiratory infection},
author={Horne, Benjamin D and Joy, Elizabeth A and Hofmann, Michelle G and Gesteland, Per H and Cannon, John B and Lefler, Jacob S and Blagev, Denitza P and Korgenski, E Kent and Torosyan, Natalie and Hansen, Grant I and others},
journal={American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine},
volume={198},
number={6},
pages={759--766},
year={2018},
publisher={American Thoracic Society}
}
*For all publications, please see my CV
Volunteer & Leadership Experience
2017-2018
Student Alumni Relations Representative
Organized college-wide student-alumni networking dinner. Organized fundraising event for student-to-student need-based scholarship program. Met regularly with dean to discuss and address student needs.
Nov 2011 - Nov 2013
Full-time Missionary and Representative
Taught lessons in Tagalog language designed to strengthen families and communities. Organized quarterly conference and trainings for volunteers across six cities. Gathered and analyzed organizational data for regional leadership. Organized and coordinated community service projects with local leaders.
Technical Skills
Mathematics:
Matrix Analysis,
Complex Analysis,
Functional Analysis,
Numerical Linear Algebra,
Control Theory,
Probability Theory,
Parallel Computing,
Algorithm Design,
Linear & Nonlinear Optimization,
Active Learning,
Advanced Econometrics,
Abstract Algegra,
Differential Equations
Machine Learning:
Natural Language Processing (NLP),
Large Language Models (LLMs),
Knowledge Graphs,
Deep Learning,
Bayesian Statistics,
Computer Vision,
Semi-Supervised Learning,
Weak Supervision,
Information Retrieval
Packages:
Pytorch,
Pandas,
SpaCy,
NLTK,
RDKit,
Huggingface,
LangChain,
OpenAI
Programming:
Python,
R,
Stata,
Mathematica
Web:
HTML,
Web scraping,
SQL,
Cypher,
LaTeX,
Markdown,
Jekyll,
Git,
Google API suite
Visualization:
Figma,
Seaborn,
Bokeh,
Draw.io
Languages:
English (Native),
Tagalog (Professional),
Spanish (Intermediate),
German (Intermediate)
References
School of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Medicine
University of Utah
Applied and Computational Mathematics Program
Brigham Young University
Enveda Biosciences