Who We Are

The Women’s Health Interdisciplinary Research Collaborative (WHIRC) is a UMD Grand Challenges Institutional Grant that unites nearly 100 faculty, staff, and trainees across the University of Maryland.

Women have historically been underrepresented in clinical trials and health studies, creating knowledge gaps about health conditions that uniquely or disproportionately impact more than half the population. This underrepresentation also introduces bias into AI algorithms trained on datasets that lack sufficient women’s health data.

WHIRC addresses this critical gap by bridging disciplines — public health, psychology, bioengineering, and artificial intelligence — to expand women’s health research across the lifespan.

Leadership

• Marie Thoma — Lead PI, Associate Professor, Family Science, School of Public Health
• Jioni Lewis — PI, Associate Professor, Counseling Psychology, College of Education
• Alisa Clyne — PI, Professor, Fischell Department of Bioengineering, A. James Clark School of Engineering
• Ang Li — PI, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, A. James Clark School of Engineering

See the full team on our People page.