Juan Antonio Lossio-Ventura, PhD

About

AI for mental health and biomedicine

Research Scientist at the Machine Learning Core, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health (NIMH/NIH).

My background combines research and applied work in artificial intelligence (AI) and related fields—including natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, data science, and knowledge representation—with a strong focus on health and biomedicine. My work spans areas such as mental health, opioid prescribing, and population-level analyses of electronic health records and social media data.

I am also committed to advancing AI and computer science in Latin America, particularly in Peru. To support this mission, I co-founded the following initiatives:

Co-founder of SIMBig (since 2014) — the leading English-language AI conference focused on Latin America. Speakers from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Google, Meta.

Co-founder of LASAI (since 2025) — Spanish-language AI school expanding access in Latin America. Faculty from Cambridge, CMU, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Google.

Experience

Positions

National Institutes of Health (NIH)Research Scientist · NIMH · Jan 2021 – present

Support NIMH intramural researchers in clinical and cognitive neuroscience using AI methods.

Stanford UniversityPostdoctoral Research Fellow · Biomedical Informatics · May 2019 – Jan 2021

NLP/ML on EHR and social networks for health-informatics research.

University of FloridaPostdoctoral Associate · Biomedical Informatics · May 2016 – Apr 2019

Biomedical NLP for health-related knowledge graphs and social-network analysis.

University of Manchester — NaCTeMResearch Visit · Jul – Aug 2015 · Sophia Ananiadou

Biomedical NLP — term extraction and sense detection.

University of Montpellier — LIRMMPhD Candidate · Oct 2012 – Dec 2015

Biomedical ontologies for semantic indexing of French biomedical data.

Xerox Research Centre EuropeR&D Engineer · May – Sep 2012 · now Naver Labs

Multimodal information retrieval from personal EHRs. Patent.

Alcatel-Lucent — Bell LabsR&D Internship · Feb – Aug 2011 · now Nokia Bell Labs

Framework for linking semantic information in social networks.

Orange — France TélécomInternship · May – Sep 2010

Web services for an Orange online community.

Touring y Automóvil Club del PerúAnalyst Programmer · Jan – Aug 2008

Education

Training

PhD · Computer Science · University of Montpellier (LIRMM)

Oct 2012 – Nov 2015 · France

BioNLP, text mining and biomedical ontologies. Advisors: Clement Jonquet, Mathieu Roche, Maguelonne Teisseire.

MSc · Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems

Oct 2011 – Sep 2012 · INSA Lyon / University of Lyon 1, France

MSc · Business Intelligence and Statistics

Sep 2009 – Aug 2010 · University of Lyon 2, France

Computer Science & Engineering · UNMSM

Mar 2004 – Dec 2008 · Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru

Research

Projects, awards & service

Projects & Scientific Software

SIFR Project — ontology-based services for indexing, mining and retrieval of biomedical data (with NCBO, Stanford).
BIrthDAY Consortium — decision-making tools for agriculture and biodiversity in Peru.
OC-2-KB — Obesity and Cancer to Knowledge Base (2017).
BioTex — biomedical term extraction with multiple ranking measures (2014–2015).

Patent

Targeted Summarization of Medical Data Based on Implicit Queries — patient EHRs into multidimensional search-space representations (2013–2014).

Grants, Fellowships & Awards

Best #COVID19 Project — $5,000 Google prize, Stanford Biodesign (2020). #HomeDerm, telemedicine for the elderly. More info.
Postdoctoral grant — $27,963, Institute of Informatics, University of Florida (2017–2018).
AIJ funding — $3,000 for SIMBig 2024.
NAACL funding — $1,000 / $1,500 / $1,000 for SIMBig 2023 / 2022 / 2018.
Google funding — $500 for SIMBig 2018.
IEEE BIBM 2016 student travel award — $1,000.
Award for professional excellence in Computer Science — UNMSM (2015).
Best Mini-Project (Hospital Finder) — SSSW 2013, under Natasha Noy.
FINCyT research scholarships, Peru (last 2013).
Chess trophies and awards (2000–2004).

Professional Activities

Co-founder & General Co-chair of SIMBig — every edition since 2014.
Co-founder & General Co-chair of LASAI (2025–present).
Head of the BIrthDAY consortium (4 universities).
General Co-organizer of EnGeoData (2019, 2020, 2021, 2023) within IEEE DSAA.
Co-chair of Special Session EAST'2017 — FLAIRS 2017, AAAI.
Organizing committee — NLDB 2014, Montpellier.
Co-mentor of an NIH postbac researcher; advisor for 3 MSc internships in France.
Reviewer for journals (Nature, JAMIA, JMIR, …) and conferences (NAACL-HLT, IJCAI, AMIA, DSAA, ECML PKDD, FLAIRS, SIGMOD, TALN, …).

Invited Talks (selected)

2023: AI Workshop, University of Florida.
2020: TEDxUNMSM, Lima, Peru.
2019: AI Seminar, UNMSM, Lima.
2015: Big Data & Data Mining seminar series — UNMSM, U. del Pacífico, UTP (Lima).
2014: WRPIAA 2014, PUCP, Lima.

Publications

Profiles

Teaching

Across three countries

Data science, ML, AI and biomedical informatics — USA, France and Peru. Undergraduate, graduate students, faculty training and professional development, beginner to advanced audiences.

Recent

2024 · UNMSM (Peru): Applications of Generative AI and NLP.

Earlier — USA

2016–2019 · University of Florida: Data Science — Python (Pandas, Scikit-learn, NumPy) and Weka tutorials for MS/PhD students.
2016–2018 · University of Florida: BioNLP — named entity recognition, term and relation extraction, ontology construction.
2018 · UPCH (Peru): Data Science for Biomedical Research — intensive course for MS students.

Earlier — France

2014–2015 · IUT Béziers / University of Montpellier: Web programming (PHP), TER MS supervision.
2013–2014 · University of Montpellier: Data Mining, Databases & Information Systems, NoSQL, Algorithmics & Programming.
2012–2013 · EPSI Montpellier: Database Administration (Oracle 11g).

Media & Press