A native of Brazil, Mendonca holds a medical degree from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil and earned a PhD in biomedical informatics from Columbia University in New York.
Mendonca’s research focuses on developing automated semantic and statistical methods to extract biomedical data from patient records while maintaining patient privacy. She studies ways to generate new research knowledge from electronic health records data, social and environmental data, and patient generated data. Her research also explores how to apply health informatics to support clinical practice, health prevention at population level, and translational research.
Mendonca is funded by CDC, PCORI and NIH. Recent projects include the understanding of diabetes burden in children and adolescents, computable social phenotyping, and health disparities in pediatric cancer and respiratory diseases.
She has been involved in many multi-institution projects, including a NIH-funded Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) study and the Children’s Respiratory Research and Environment Workgroup (CREW), where she uses informatics tools to harmonize data among several large cohorts, combining clinical data, social determinants of health, behavior, and biological markers, among others.
“Healthcare and research are increasingly reliant on and driven by advances in informatics and data sciences,” says Tina Cheng, MD, PhD, chair of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, director of the Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation, and chief medical officer for Cincinnati Children’s. “The Division of Biomedical Informatics is critical to our clinical, research and innovation enterprise. We are thrilled to have Dr. Mendonca join us and to have Dr. Tachinardi’s partnership at UC.”
Photos courtesy of the Regenstrief Institute.