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Harnessing AI and biomedical data to revolutionize precision health and precision medicine

Welcome to the Department of Biomedical Data Science

The Department of Biomedical Data Science merges the disciplines of biomedical informatics, biostatistics, computer science and advances in AI. The intersection of these disciplines is applied to precision health, leveraging data across the entire medical spectrum, including molecular, tissue, medical imaging, EHR, biosensory, and population data.

The 2026 Annual Report

Advancing Precision Health and Medicine Through Artificial Intelligence and Biomedical Data
Annual Report 2026 Cover Image: Advancing Precision Health Through Artificial Intelligence and Biomedical Data

AI is changing how scientists discover biology, how clinicians make decisions, and how students prepare for the future of medicine. The Stanford Department of Biomedical Data Science’s 2026 Annual Report highlights breakthroughs in AI, genomics, computational biology, and medical imaging – and the people and partnerships turning data into better health. 

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Contribute to data-driven biomedical research and innovation

Our Mission

The Department of Biomedical Data Science (DBDS) is an academic research community, comprised of faculty, students, and staff, whose mission is to advance precision health by leveraging large, complex, multi-scale real-world data through the development and implementation of novel analytical tools and methods.

What is Biomedical Data Science?

Biomedical Data Science “spans a range of biological and medical research challenges that are data intensive and focused on the creation of novel methodologies to advance biomedical science discovery.” The term “data science” describes expertise associated with taking (usually large) data sets and annotating, cleaning, organizing, storing, and analyzing them for the purposes of extracting knowledge. It merges the disciplines of statistics, computer science, and computational engineering” (Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science).

Kristy Carpenter

@StanfordDBDS

Kristy Carpenter wins the “Drug Repurposing” NIDA Challenge and may have solved an even bigger issue with her research

When Kristy Carpenter, a DBDS PhD student, recently won the “Drug Repurposing and Repositioning Insights for Treating SUDs” Challenge sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), it was the result of research that had unfolding for years, beginning at a surprising origin point. Her proposal, “Repurposing Telmisartan for Opioid Use Disorder” involves using a well-established hypertension medication to curb opioid usage, which, if successful, could help people struggling with opioid use disorder manage their condition.

Biomedical Data Science Graduate Program

Our mission is to train future research leaders to design and implement novel quantitative and computational methods that solve challenging problems across the entire spectrum of biology and medicine.