Aliaa Barakat PhD
Founder
President and Chief Executive Officer
Category:
Leadership
Trustee
Dr. Barakat is a mathematician, biological scientist, health care researcher, and clinical mental health counselor. Her interdisciplinary work integrates quantitative science with translational medicine, patient-centered research, and clinical care to improve the understanding and treatment of complex disease. She is an investigator in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she develops informatics methods to characterize immune-mediated interstitial lung disease and support more precise diagnosis and treatment. As a senior staff scientist in the Molecular Biomarkers Nano-Imaging Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, her research has contributed to minimally invasive approaches for detecting disease-related molecular processes before irreversible cellular and structural injury occurs.
Dr. Barakat founded and directs the Pulmonary Care and Research Collaborative and its ILD Collaborative. Together, these established networks work to improve outcomes for pulmonary patients and build a nationwide data infrastructure for cross-institutional clinical research guided by the priorities of patients and physicians. Drawing on this work, she served as Patient Partner and Engagement Lead for the Accessible Research Commons for Health (ARCH), PCORI’s Harvard-led clinical data research network. In that role, she developed ARCH’s stakeholder engagement policy and advised the network on opportunities for patient-driven research.
After being diagnosed with interstitial lung disease in 2009, Dr. Barakat developed a deep commitment to patient-centered research, health equity, and regulatory policy and began directing her work toward applications in medicine. She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and completed postdoctoral appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. She also holds a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling and serves as an outpatient clinician and Clinical Program Lead at the Brookline Center for Community Mental Health.
Dr. Barakat founded and directs the Pulmonary Care and Research Collaborative and its ILD Collaborative. Together, these established networks work to improve outcomes for pulmonary patients and build a nationwide data infrastructure for cross-institutional clinical research guided by the priorities of patients and physicians. Drawing on this work, she served as Patient Partner and Engagement Lead for the Accessible Research Commons for Health (ARCH), PCORI’s Harvard-led clinical data research network. In that role, she developed ARCH’s stakeholder engagement policy and advised the network on opportunities for patient-driven research.
After being diagnosed with interstitial lung disease in 2009, Dr. Barakat developed a deep commitment to patient-centered research, health equity, and regulatory policy and began directing her work toward applications in medicine. She earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and completed postdoctoral appointments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. She also holds a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling and serves as an outpatient clinician and Clinical Program Lead at the Brookline Center for Community Mental Health.