Juan Carlos Espinoza Salomon, MD

After completing his undergraduate degree at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Juan Espinoza received an Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) at the Immunotherapy Unit of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. During his time at the NIH, Dr. Espinoza worked on small molecule design, developing new therapeutic and research tools. He graduated from the USC Keck School of Medicine and completed his pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in 2013, and in 2014 became an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the USC Keck School of Medicine. 
 
While at CHLA, Dr. Espinoza’s clinical time focused on complex care coordination and obesity management, while his research focuses on informatics, medical devices, health equity, and global health. He held a number of leadership roles in informatics and innovation, including serving as the Co-Director of Clinical Research Informatics Core for the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UL1TR001855), Medical Director of the CHLA Innovation Studio, Methods and Data Core Director for the Southern California Center for Latino Health (P50MD017344), Research Lead for the International Digital Health Team, and Director and Principal Investigator for The West Coast Consortium for Technology & Innovation Pediatrics (P50FD006425), an FDA-funded pediatric medical device accelerator. His overarching career goal as a researcher, physician, and advocate is to identify, refine, and innovate approaches to using data and technology to improve health outcomes and narrow the health gap faced by marginalized communities in the United States and abroad.  
 
Dr. Espinoza’s academic interests are complemented by his experiences outside of medicine; in 2010 he co-founded GC/MDDM, a digital media production company that worked with television, film, web, and mobile technologies. Through this endeavor, he has partnered with both the entertainment and healthcare industries to create and implement technology and media solutions. Dr. Espinoza utilizes these same skills in his research, teaching, and clinical practice. 
 
In January 2023, Dr. Espinoza joined Lurie Children’s Hospital as the inaugural Chief Research Informatics Officer and Associate Director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Data Science at Northwestern University. In this new role, he provides expertise and oversight of research informatics and analytics as applied to basic, translational, clinical, and population health sciences.