Ricky-Taira,-PhD--
rtaira@ucla.edu
(310) 794-3535
Office Info

924 Westwood Blvd, Suite 420, Room A

Ricky Taira, PhD

Professor, Department of Radiological Sciences

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Ricky Taira obtained his Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1982, and went on to receive a PhD in biomedical physics in 1988 from UCLA. He is now a Professor in the Department of Radiological Sciences at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. His past research interests have included picture archive and communication systems (PACS), medical knowledge bases (the KMeD project) for intelligent patient case retrieval, and structuring clinical observations for disease modeling. Currently, his main research focus is on developing a cognitively inspired natural language processing system (NLP) for clinical reports. He is the co-PI and investigator of several NIH-funded grants. Dr. Taira is the UCLA site PI for a telemedicine screening grant for diabetic retinopathy in collaboration with Charles Drew University and the Los Angeles County of Health Services. Dr. Taira teaches courses in medical knowledge representation and medical imaging informatics that are part of the UCLA Medical and Imaging Informatics interdisciplinary training program.