UCSF Profiles

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Maninder (Mini) Kahlon is the Deputy Director, Chief Information Officer (CIO) and a Board member of UCSF’s Clinical & Translational Science Institute (CTSI). CTSI facilitates the rapid translation of research to improvements in patient and community health. Established in 2006, the Institute was among the first of the now 60-member, National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded, Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) consortium. At CTSI Mini is responsible for the institutes programs and strategy, coordinating across UCSF and the national network. As CIO she facilitates the development of technology and informatics projects that are necessary to accelerate research, ranging from new ways to enable the discovery of expertise and facilitate networking to driving cross-institutional collaboration to share clinical data for research across the UC medical centers.

A neuroscientist trained at UCSF, she also brings experience from working in the software industry in Silicon Valley and the philanthropic non-profit sector. Mini has spoken in a wide variety of contexts, ranging from describing the cognitive science of unconscious processing to Kaiser doctors, catalyzing social change through technology at SXSW Interactive, and the creation of national networks of research expertise at the NIH. She has been profiled in the press, including Business Week, San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune for her work in leveraging science to create societal impact.

Other national roles and service:

- Founded and lead the CTSA National Research Networking committee. Facilitated the launch of a 29-institution, pilot network of biomedical research expertise ("DIRECT2experts").
- Member of the Executive Committee for UC Research Exchange (UC ReX) program, leading the development of a cross-institutional network of clinical data to enable large-scale research
- Served on the National CTSA IT External Advisory committee.
- Received City & County of San Francisco, Certificate of Honor for volunteer community work.

Selected presentations available below include:

- Enabling New Models of Precompetitive Collaboration in Proposal Creation and Team Formation
- A National Network of Biomedical Research Expertise (Presentation to CTSA Strategic Goal 3 leadership, Feb 2011)
- Beyond Web 2.0 as Buzzwords - Engaging Users to Contribute Online (Presentation at CTSA Informatics annual meeting, Oct 2010)
- Introduction to UCSF Profiles (Standard presentation developed to launch and explain UCSF's version of Harvard's open source software Profiles Research Networking Tool)