A Decade of Impact: Celebrating Atul Butte & BCHSI@10
August 19, 2025
More than 200 colleagues, collaborators, and community members gathered last week to celebrate “A Decade of Impact: Atul Butte & BCHSI@10,” marking the 10th anniversary of the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (BCHSI) at UCSF. The symposium honored the late founding director, Atul Butte, MD, PhD, whose visionary leadership established UCSF as a global leader in computational health sciences and pioneered data-driven approaches to medicine across the UC system.
BCHSI Interim Director, Marina Sirota, PhD, professor of pediatrics, opened the symposium by sharing background on the Institute and the early years when Atul Butte came to UCSF. Angela Rizk-Jackson, PhD, BCHSI COO, shared about institute’s achievements in training and computational community building at UCSF and beyond and Sharat Israni, PhD, BCHSI CTO, talked about Information Commons, an platform enabling AI and innovation at UCSF through clinical data sharing.
The event featured talks and tributes from UCSF leaders including Dean Talmadge King, MD; Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS; Keith Yamamoto, PhD; and Bob Wachter, MD and many others. Themes such as “Using Trillions of Data to Advance Medicine,” “AI as a Scalable Privilege,” and “Multimodal AI Across the Scales” highlighted the Institute’s role in advancing precision medicine, AI-driven healthcare innovation, and data sharing at scale (See agenda).
Founded by Dr. Butte in 2015 with 30 faculty, BCHSI has grown to 90 affiliated faculty and achieved endowed status. Under his leadership, the Institute launched the Information Commons, a cornerstone AI data-sharing platform, and built transformative partnerships across UCSF and UC Health, where Dr. Butte also served as Chief Data Scientist.
Speakers reflected on Dr. Butte’s legacy of open science, collaboration, and optimism, noting his ability to inspire entire communities to think differently, innovate boldly, and act with compassion. In closing remarks, Chancellor Hawgood called BCHSI a “beacon of progress and discovery” and charged the community to carry Dr. Butte’s vision into the next decade.
-Check out 10 Year Report now available online – milestones, tools, services, key research!
-Watch the symposium recording here with video montage tribute to Dr. Atul Butte
Photo Highlights (photos by Susan Merrell, UCSF):
