Nicholas Soulakis is currently an Assistant Professor in the Division of Health and Biomedical Informatics, Department of Preventive Medicine and Director of Data Science Services for the Center for Data Science and Informatics at the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational (NUCATS) Institute.
Dr. Soulakis is a public health scientist whose research focus lies at the intersection of epidemiology and informatics with an emphasis on understanding the expanding, data-rich environment created by health information technology and leveraging computationally intensive analytical techniques to monitor healthcare quality and ultimately improve population health outcomes. His current work is an expansion into the newly emerging field of quality informatics and patient outcomes; seeking to better understand the ascertainment of healthcare networks and developing a more comprehensive scientific approach to understanding the dynamics of care coordination for hospitalized patient populations. Dr. Soulakis also maintains an active research program in public health informatics, especially tracking emerging trends in community health using temporal and spatial surveillance methods, identifying new and novel methods of data collection and processing of electronic health record data, and examining electronic exchange of health information between healthcare providers and public health agencies. His work has been funded by the National Library of Medicine and published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, American Journal of Public Health, and Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Soulakis attended the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health where he earned a PhD in Epidemiology. After working as an epidemiologist for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for a number of years, he joined the faculty of the Feinberg School of Medicine.