School of Information - Health Informatics
Faculty

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).

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, 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.

Rebecca Meehan, Ph.D., came to the iSchool in 2012, bringing an extensive background in research related to health care and health informatics, particularly focused on information technology and user experience. Her interests center on improving patient safety outcomes by improving the user experience of health information technology, and sociotechnical approaches to improving health outcomes for a diverse cultural population. Dr. Meehan bridges academic research to industry applications and standards. Her previous experience includes senior research roles with Intuit, Inc., a fortune 500 company, as well as Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Department of Sociology. She also has served as senior research scientist at Myers Research Institute of Menorah Park Center for Senior Living, and senior research associate at Innovative Designs in Environments for an Aging Society (I.D.E.A.S., Inc.). Meehan holds a B.S. in biology from St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Ind.; a master’s and a Ph.D. in sociology from Case Western Reserve University, with concentrations in medical sociology and gerontology.

*The School of Information faculty are superstars in the field. Therefore, it is impossible to list all of the great work they do on one page. Listed below is a small selection of recent work. Further information can be viewed in Dr. Meehan’s CV (found below), on her Google Scholar page, on ResearchGate, or on her personal website.

John Sharp, MSSA, FHIMSS, has been Adjunct Faculty in the Health Informatics Master’s Program at Kent State University since 2012. He developed and frequently teaches Clinical Analytics I and II.

John recently retired as the Director of Thought Advisory for the Personal Connected Health Alliance, a HIMSS innovation company. Before working with HIMSS, Sharp had years of experience managing research informatics at Cleveland Clinic and at the Clinical and Translation Science Collaborative. In addition to producing white papers and blog posts on digital health, he advises startups through incubators and challenge competitions. He is the author of several book chapters and journal articles on digital health.