About

The AIM-AHEAD Coordinating Center (A-CC) is a consortium of institutions and organizations that have a core mission to advance health across all American communities. The A-CC consists of 4 Cores:

The Leadership/Administrative Core leads the A-CC, recruits and coordinates consortium members, project management, partnerships, stakeholder engagement and outreach to develop AI/ML talented researchers in health research, and establishes trusted relationships with key stakeholders to enhance the volume and quality of data used in AI/ML research.

The Data Science Training Core assesses, develops and implements a robust data science training curriculum and workforce development resources in AI/ML. 

The Data and Research Core addresses research priorities and needs by linking and preparing multiple sources and types of research data. To accomplish its mission, the Data and Research Core facilitates the extraction and transformation of data from EHR and data on lifestyle contributors to health for research use.

The Infrastructure Core assesses data, computing and software infrastructure models, tools, resources, data science policies, and AI/ML computing models to facilitate AI/ML and health research; and establishes pilot data and analysis environments to accelerate overall A-CC aims.

The AIM-AHEAD Consortium members have a wide range of expertise and skill levels relevant to artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) and biomedical healthcare research. The AIM-AHEAD Coordinating Center (A-CC) identifies training needs and develops training and workforce development resources to address these knowledge gaps.

Training assessments consider AI/ML and barriers to health research as well as related competencies in, for example, cloud computing, distributed computing, data preparation, data science, biostatistics, modelling, epidemiology, clinical/biomedical informatics, data science policy, and community engaged research methods.

Training offerings are particularly useful for engaging early career investigators and researchers with a variety of backgrounds into AI/ML research. The training offerings consider the skills and competencies needed for the AIM-AHEAD projects as well as the professional development and potential career paths of the trainees. Internships and practical training opportunities with private sector partners may be leveraged.

It is expected that application-based learning opportunities with large scale data will be an important aspect of training and workforce development. The Data Science Training Core therefore works closely with other A-CC efforts to develop and leverage platforms to access AI/ML-ready data.