Faculty

Faculty Bios

Mara Daiker

Mara Daiker, MS, RHIA, CPHIMS, SHIMSS has been an adjunct instructor for the Health Informatics program since 2020. In addition, Daiker is the Director of Professional Development at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS).

Dr. Yi Hong

Yi Hong, Ph.D., has been an adjunct instructor in Kent State’s iSchool since 2018. In addition to teaching, Dr. Hong works as an Integration Data Architect in a health data analytics company. She has over 20 years of practical experience working with health data to improve outcomes and efficiency of healthcare through data modeling and analysis, data transformation and standardized terminology services. She has enjoyed sharing her extensive experience with students in iSchools.

Dr. Hong holds a doctorate degree in Biomedical and Health Informatics from University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Her research interests focus on big data modeling and mining, information architecture, standardized terminologies and controlled vocabularies, clinical decision support, information organization and knowledge representation. Honors include the New Investigator Award of the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine and the Graduate of the Last Decade Award of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has developed courses in standardized terminologies in healthcare, information organization and knowledge management which integrate theory with real world applications.

Marcia Lei Zeng

Marcia Lei Zeng, Ph.D., is a professor in The School of Information at Kent State University. She holds a Ph.D. from the School of Information Sciences at University of Pittsburgh (USA) and an MA from Wuhan University (China). Her major research interests include knowledge organization systems (taxonomy, thesaurus, ontology, etc.), Linked Data, metadata and markup languages, database quality control, multilingual and multicultural information processing, and digital libraries for cultural objects.

Her scholarly publications consist of more than 80 papers and five books, as well as about 200 national and international conference presentations, invited lectures and keynote speeches. She was the PI and Co-PI of two National Science Foundation's (NSF) National Science Digital Library (NSDL) projects. She currently is the PI of an IMLS-funded Linked Data project. In 2014, she was elected inaugural chair of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) Advisory Board. Also in 2014, Zeng was recognized by Kent State University for Outstanding Research and Scholarship, and in 2016, she received the President’s Faculty Excellence Award from Kent State President Beverly Warren.

Jim Lockshaw

Jim Lockshaw has over 26 years of experience in the field of information technology (IT). He spent 15 years supporting hospital billing applications, and worked as a manager in clinical applications at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio. In that role, he successfully led a large team of individuals whose primary responsibility was to implement the electronic health records in the outpatient environment for over 1,200 physicians covering over 35 specialties.

He has participated in several application installs, including an oncology documentation application, a patient health portal application and a patient-tracking application. Lockshaw then moved into a director of applications position at the Cleveland Clinic, where he oversaw the implementation of the electronic medical records to an affiliate hospital. This included inpatient documentation, provider order entry, results reporting, pharmacy, electronic medication administration, operating room scheduling, emergency department triage and tracking. In these roles, Lockshaw was responsible for managing the budget, analysis, build, training and support for each of these projects.

Lockshaw earned his MBA from Cleveland State University and a BS in Computer Science from Youngstown State University. He has been a member of Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for the past eight years and is a former president of the Northern Ohio chapter. Jim also volunteers at the Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland and has assisted them with their electronic medical record implementation.

Rebecca Meehan

Rebecca Meehan, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of health informatics (HI) at Kent State University, where she teaches Human Factors & Usability in HI, Inquiry and Assessment in HI, and Health Information Systems. Professor Meehan earned a BS in Biology at St. Mary’s College and then went on to Case Western Reserve University for both her MA and Ph.D. in Medical Sociology and Gerontology.

Professor Meehan is a health informaticist with over 20 years of experience in applied research in health and aging. She has been the project director and senior research associate at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Department of Sociology, St. Elizabeth Hospital, and Innovative Designs in Environments for an Aging Society (IDEAS, Inc.). Her work in academic research is complimented by industry knowledge in software development. She’s worked in the industry as a product manager and usability researcher for Intuit, Inc. for global enterprise-level software systems. She also consulted independently (Meehan Group, LLC) on usability projects for U.S. and global clients in healthcare and wellness. These experiences allow her to bring a unique perspective for her students and research as having both academic and industry experience in health information technology (HIT).

The focus of professor Meehan’s research in health informatics is improving usability of health information technology (HIT), with special attention to HIT’s use in long-term, post-acute care settings. She is the author of several publications and has presented at both national and international conferences. Meehan is an active member of the HL7 EHR Usability Workgroup, LeadingAge Center for Healthcare Technologies (CAST), Human Factors and Ergonomic Society (HFES), the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA).

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John Sharp

John Sharp, MSSA, is a senior manager in the Personal Connected Health Alliance of HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society), responsible for connected health, including patient engagement technologies. He is located in the HIMSS Innovation Center in Cleveland. He has been in health IT since 1999. He is adjunct faculty in the health informatics master’s program at Kent State University since 2012. He is the author of several book chapters and journal articles on healthcare information technology, social media and chronic kidney disease. His most recent book chapter appears in Participatory Healthcare. He received his bachelor's and master’s degrees from Case Western Reserve University. He is an advisor to startup companies and accelerators, and he blogs regularly on LinkedIn.

Paul Ylvisaker

Paul Ylvisaker is an exceptional registered nurse who seeks the privilege of utilizing education, nursing skills and life experience to deliver quality, patient-centered care to patients across the developmental lifespan. He currently serves as an adjunct professor of health informatics in the The School of Information at Kent State University. Ylvisaker received his MS in Nursing from the University of Arizona, where he is currently pursuing his doctorate in the same field. He also received his JD from the Saint Louis University School of Law and his BS in Business Management from Maryville University.