Plenary Speakers
Tuesday, July 28
Decision Intelligence for Clinical Operations: Designed for Impact
Natalia Summerville, PhD
Director of Decision Intelligence
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Achieving impact in clinical operations requires more than well-designed models. This plenary discusses how decision intelligence efforts move from problem scoping through governance to deployment, with impact as the primary objective. Using a real workload assignment tool from medical physics, the talk highlights practical lessons on designing, governing, and implementing models so they meaningfully support clinical workflows and operational decision-making.
About Natalia Summerville
Natalia Summerville, PhD, is the Director of Decision Intelligence at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she leads the deployment of AI- and Operations Research–based solutions supporting hospital operations and clinical workflows. She co-created MSK’s AI Governance Operating Model and serves on the AI Governance Council, bringing 14+ years of experience turning AI, optimization, and analytics into real-world clinical and operational impact—without breaking trust, safety, or common sense.
Previously, Dr. Summerville led a team of Operations Research specialists within SAS Research & Development, overseeing the design and implementation of large-scale, custom analytics solutions.
Her deepest passion is the Data for Good movement, with a particular focus on improving Human Milk Bank operations through data science and decision intelligence. Since 2015, she has led more than ten pro bono analytics projects with Human Milk Banks across the United States and has served as a board member of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA) since 2024.
Dr. Summerville is an active leader within INFORMS, currently serving on the Pro Bono Analytics Board, the Franz Edelman Award Committee, and as Practice Cluster Chair for the INFORMS Healthcare Conference.She is also a published author, patented inventor, and frequent speaker.
Dr. Summerville is a dedicated educator, having taught since 2005 at Tecnológico de Monterrey, North Carolina State University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering.
Wednesday, July 29
Diagnosing Complex Problems in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Developing Comprehensive Treatment Plans
Amy Cohn, PhD, AB
Chief Transformation Officer
Michigan Medicine
Just as the human body is a complex system of interconnecting and interdependent components, so is the healthcare system. Given such complexity, it can be easy to see the symptoms of a problem but difficult to diagnose the underlying cause (or causes). Likewise, it can be challenging to develop and coordinate a treatment plan that addresses the root problem without causing unnecessary or unacceptable harm to other components. Physicians are trained to solve these complex diagnostic and treatment planning problems for the human body. In this talk, I will discuss how I approach the challenges of “diagnosis’ and “treatment planning” for addressing challenges in healthcare operations.
About Amy Cohn
Amy Ellen Mainville Cohn is an Alfred F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she also holds an appointment in the Department of Health Management and Policy in the School of Public Health. Dr. Cohn is the Faculty Director of the Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety (CHEPS) and the Chief Transformation Officer for Michigan Medicine. She holds an A.B. in applied mathematics, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and a PhD in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her primary research interests are in applications of combinatorial optimization, particularly to healthcare and aviation, and to the challenges of optimization problems with multiple objective criteria.
Thursday, July 30
Jamie Pina, PhD, MSPH, FAMIA
Vice President, Data Strategy
RTI International
About Jamie Pina
With more than 20 years of experience driving advancement and innovation, Dr. Jamie Pina is a scientific and executive leader in biomedical and public health informatics. As Vice President of Data Strategy at RTI, he leads a team that positions data as a strategic institutional asset, guiding AI-driven innovation and advancing data governance frameworks that support quality, trust, and reusability in biomedical and public health research. Dr. Pina works to solve mission-driven challenges with cutting-edge public health and biomedical information systems and uses research to propel the use of emerging technologies in public health practice. His recent work energizes and enhances national data architectures for public health and biomedical research, exploring the use of health equity data models, and integrating generative AI into public health practice to improve efficiency.
He began his career in IT as a database administrator, network administrator, and software developer, and later earned a PhD in Biomedical Informatics. His research focused on electronic disease reporting and public health data systems. Since then, he has served as a Principal Investigator on major NIH initiatives and provided national thought leadership on data modernization, generative AI, and data equity.
At the heart of Dr Pina’s work is a commitment to designing data ecosystems that are intelligent, ethical, and usable systems that empower people and organizations to solve real-world problems at scale.
