Anjun (AJ) Chen, PhD, is the Founder and Principal Investigator of the ELHS Institute in Silicon Valley, where he leads efforts to democratize generative AI (GenAI) and build equitable Learning Health System (LHS) units to advance global health equity. AJ is a pioneer of the concepts of "LHS units" and "theoretical LLMs," and has championed the use of synthetic patient data to accelerate GenAI research and its real-world applications in healthcare transformation.
With a background in consumer health technology, AJ served on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Region IX Health Equity Council (2011–2016) and the Consumer Technology Workgroup of the HHS Federal Advisory Committee on Health IT Standards (2013–2014). He is a two-time winner of national developer challenges hosted by the US HHS.
AJ developed the core semantic search technologies at Healthline.com, helping the platform reach over 100 million monthly users. He also led the development of genomic software for personalized medicine at Hyseq, and collaborated with Nobel Laureate Dr. Barry Marshall to promote disruptive medical discoveries.
He completed postdoctoral training in Immunology at Harvard Medical School and Duke University School of Medicine, earned his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Utah, and holds a BS in Chemistry from Fudan University.