Maxim Topaz
Building AI that helps nurses and doctors make better decisions — and auditing the scientific record in the age of AI.
Research
$25M+ in funding. 230+ publications on AI in healthcare, clinical decision support, and nursing informatics.
→Speaking
TEDx and AMIA keynote speaker. Global keynotes on AI in healthcare, from Tokyo to Denver to São Paulo.
→Writing & Press
LinkedIn writing on AI in healthcare, plus coverage from Nature Medicine, Health Affairs, and other outlets.
→References to nowhere.
An automated audit of citation integrity across 2.5 million biomedical papers uncovers a rising signature of references that cite studies which do not exist. More than twelve times the rate of three years ago.
Read the investigation →From Army medic to Columbia.
My journey began in the field as an Army medic and Registered Nurse, experiences that taught me what patients truly need. Today, I channel that frontline wisdom into building AI tools that help nurses and doctors make better decisions, faster.
As a Fulbright Fellow at UPenn and one of the first nurse scientists to complete a postdoc at Harvard Medical School, I've bridged the gap between clinical practice and cutting-edge technology.
Now at Columbia University and VNS Health, I lead a team developing AI that predicts which patients need help before a crisis happens, especially in home healthcare, where early intervention saves lives.
Most recently, that work has widened to scientific integrity in the age of AI: our CITADEL audit of 2.5 million biomedical papers, published in The Lancet, uncovered thousands of fabricated citations entering the literature — work now shaping how journals, publishers, and funders verify the scientific record.
Radical System Transformation
TEDxNightingale College · Salt Lake City · 2026
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