Allison Heath

Allison Heath is the Director for Technology and Innovation at the D3b Center in Philadelphia's Children's Hospital.

Allison Heath (B.S. ’04, M.S. ’07, Ph.D. ’10) is the Director of Data Technology and Innovation at the Center for for Data Driven Discovery in Biomedicine (D3b) in The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She is responsible for providing technical and collaborative leadership to build platforms for data-driven discovery that span both research and operational efforts. She is also responsible for the supervision of the research and software development team that performs basic and applied research in data intensive computing, bioinformatics, cloud computing, and related areas. Her own research is focused on computing systems and algorithms tailored for data intensive science, specifically with applications to genomics.

One of her current projects, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center, is a new, collaborative, pediatric research effort with the goal of understanding the genetic causes and links between childhood cancer and structural birth defects.

The program was created to accelerate data-driven discoveries and the development of novel precision-based approaches for children diagnosed with cancer or a structural birth defect using large genomic datasets. The Kids First DRC is comprised of integrated core teams that support the development of leading-edge big data infrastructure, and provide the necessary resources and tools to empower researchers and clinicians. The Kids First DRC’s doctors, scientists, and researchers work together with patient families to understand the underlying causes of these diseases in children on a biological level and to ultimately support the development of improved and targeted treatments.

Prior to joining the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Heath worked with the University of Chicago as their Director of Research for the Center for Data Intensive Science. Her general research interests focused on enabling large-scale scientific discovery utilizing cloud computing systems and algorithms tailored for data intensive science.