THRIVING
August 2024
iTHRIV Under the Microscope
Johanna is iTHRIV’s Director of Informatics and also leads the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Logic Liaison team. With a bachelors in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and a master’s in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia she is passionate about designing, integrating, and managing complex systems that support translational health research. Johanna previously worked as the Director of Neurosurgery and Neuro-oncology clinical research, managing dozens of drug and device trials as well as outcomes research. Her years of bedside research experience richly inform her understanding of translational research procedures, patient care workflows, and Real-World Data (RWD) as represented in electronic health record systems.
Now, as the Director of Informatics for iTHRIV, she oversees the development of a variety of processes and systems that accelerate translational data science. She is the Product Owner for the iTHRIV Portal and Research Data Commons. She designed the “Logic Liaison” data pipelines that facilitate data integration and feature extraction, helping researchers
Johanna Loomba, ME
iTHRIV Director of Informatics
transform complex source data into machine learning ready dataframes. She also trains researchers in the use of health informatics tools including open-source tools created by groups like OHDSI as well as industry software such as TriNetX. Johanna has served as an informatician and co-author on over 50 manuscripts while working at iTHRIV. She also enjoys teaching health informatics to iTHRIV interns and to early career professionals as an instructor for the AIM AHEAD "Traineeship in Advanced Data Analysis Using NCATS Data and the N3C Enclave".
Johanna’s personal interests are as varied as her professional work. She dabbles in creative fun like making music with friends, gardening, painting, weaving, and potting. She also loves to hunt mushrooms in the woods and ferment wild harvested foods. She is grateful to have many members of her extended family nearby, including a daughter who is a senior at VCU.
