Trustworthiness of Clinical AI
As AI systems become increasingly embedded in healthcare systems and clinical settings, ensuring they remain ethical and trustworthy becomes crucial.
This closing event of the Reprogramming Governance series turns to the practical work of evaluating AI tools for bias, fairness, generalizability, and reproducibility in clinical settings, asking who holds the authority to audit clinical AI and what counts as sufficient evidence prior to deployment. This event is part of the Frontiers in Data Science and AI initiative at the Data Science Institute, Columbia University.
Details & Registration
Thursday, December 3, 2026 (8:30 AM - 1:00 PM)
Alfred Lerner Hall (Room 555) - Google Maps
Building Access: The Broadway entrance to Alfred Lerner Hall will not be open. All guests should enter Alfred Lerner Hall via the campus entrance. Here is a helpful map with directions to Alfred Lerner Hall from inside of campus.
Speakers
Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, PhD is Chief of the Division of Ethics and Professor of Medical Humanities & Ethics with tenure at Columbia University. Trained as a medical anthropologist, Dr. Lee has extensive experience leading multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional bioethics research.
Dr. Lee is Co-PI of the Center for ELSI Resources and Analysis (CERA)/ELSIhub(link is external and opens in a new window) funded by the NIH/NHGRI and was Co-Director of the 2020, 2022, and 2024 ELSI Congress. Dr. Lee is a member of the US Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP) and serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Kaiser Permanente National Research Biobank, NIH funded Human Pangenome Research Consortium, and the Genome Canada funded Canada First Research Excellence Fund Program DNA to RNA: An Inclusive Canadian Approach to Genomic-based RNA Therapeutics (D2R).
Dr. Lee has served as President of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors (ABPD) and is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Bioethics and Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics and on the Editorial Advisory Committee for the American College of Medical Genetics Journals Genetics in Medicine and Genetics in Medicine Open. She is a Hastings Center Fellow and has been a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in the Humanities, a Wenner-Gren Foundation Fellow, a University of Edinburgh Bright Ideas Fellow, and a Fellow at the School for Advanced Research.
Dr. Lee serves as Chair of the Committee on Appointments and Promotions and is Director of the Team Science Program at the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Dr. Lee received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco (UCB/UCSF) joint program in Medical Anthropology and her undergraduate degree in Human Biology from Stanford University.
Bio coming soon!
Divya Shanmugam is a National Library of Medicine Fellow at Columbia’s Department of Biomedical Informatics.
She develops machine learning methods that use large-scale healthcare datasets to understand how people seek, receive, and deliver care, and to develop more reliable AI systems. Her recent work develops methods to audit training data (NWH 2024; JAMA HF 2026); to evaluate models when labels are limited or unreliable (CHI 2023; NeurIPS 2025); and to improve the reliability of pretrained systems at test time (ICCV 2021; CVPR 2025). Her current research explores how AI can support care throughout pregnancy.
She is always excited to work with students and collaborators on problems where clinical settings raise new technical questions. Previously, she was a postdoc at Cornell Tech, advised by Emma Pierson and Jenna Wiens. Before that, she earned her Ph.D. at MIT, where she was lucky to work with John Guttag.
Agenda
Thursday, December 3, 2026
9:00 AM: Doors Open for Breakfast and Coffee
9:30 AM: Introductions (15 min)
- Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Chief of the Division of Ethics and Professor of Medical Humanities & Ethics, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
9:45 AM: Opening Provocations and Fireside Chat: Trustworthiness of Clinical AI (45 min)
- Mary L. Gray, Principal Investigator and Founder of the Resolve Institute; Professor of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University; and former Senior Principal Researcher and Chair of the Microsoft Research Ethics Review Program
- Divya Shanmugam, National Library of Medicine Fellow, Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
- Moderator: Sandra Soo-Jin Lee
10:30 AM: Breakout Discussions (30 min)
- In small groups, participants will discuss what trust means in clinical AI, whose trust matters, how it can be demonstrated, and alternative approaches to ethical AI governance.
11:00 AM: Coffee Break (15 min)
11:15 AM: Discussion with Speakers (45 min)
- Following the breakout discussions, panelists will reconvene to share key takeaways and insights from the small-group conversations.
12:00 PM: Closing Reflections (15 min)
12:15 PM: Lunch (45 min)
1:00 PM: Event Ends
FAQs
In-Person registration for external (non-CUID) guests is limited to 30 participants. All external guests will be confirmed by email by the DSI Events team.
Registration Deadline: The Columbia Morningside campus is open to the Columbia community. If you do not have an active CUID, the deadline to register is at 12:00 PM the day before the event. External guests will receive a QR code by email to enter campus.
QR Codes For External (non-Columbia) Guests: Before your visit, you will receive an email from "[email protected]" with your QR code for campus access. Please plan to show this QR code and a government issued ID at the main Columbia University gates (116th and Broadway).
Building Access: The Broadway entrance to Alfred Lerner Hall will not be open. All guests should enter Alfred Lerner Hall via the campus entrance. Here is a helpful map with directions to Alfred Lerner Hall from inside of campus.
