Michael J. Pencina, PhD

Michael J. Pencina, PhD, is Senior Vice President and Chief AI Scientist at UnitedHealth Group, where he leads the enterprise’s research and development agenda. He is responsible for setting the standards for responsible AI and guiding the research, development, and validation of trustworthy AI systems to improve health care at scale.

Prior to joining UHG, Dr. Pencina was a transformative leader at Duke University, serving as Duke Health’s Chief Data Scientist, Vice Dean for Data Science, and Director of the Duke AI Health institute. There, he established a framework for trustworthy AI, co-founding Duke’s Algorithm-Based Clinical Decision Support (ABCDS) committee to ensure the safe and ethical implementation of algorithms in clinical care. In this work he helped establish several national and international partnerships among health systems, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations committed to development and implementation of credible and transparent health AI.

An internationally recognized authority on evaluating AI algorithms, Dr. Pencina’s research informs clinical practice guidelines and regulatory science. He has authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications with more than 100,000 citations and was named a “Highly Cited Researcher” by Clarivate for nine consecutive years. He is a key voice in discussions with academic, industry, and government leaders, including the FDA, on advancing AI in medicine.

Dr. Pencina holds a PhD in Mathematics and Statistics from Boston University.