Emily Pfaff

Emily Pfaff is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Lead Faculty in the Master of Applied Data Science program at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine. She holds a PhD and MS from UNC and a BS from Wesleyan University. Her primary affiliation is the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism within the Department of Medicine. Dr. Pfaff's research focuses on Clinical Informatics, with emphasis on leveraging electronic health record (EHR) data to study post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (Long COVID) and other chronic conditions. She is a key contributor to the NIH-funded RECOVER initiative and the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), leading efforts in data governance, computational phenotyping, and EHR-based cohort studies. Her work integrates machine learning, epidemiology, and clinical research to address public health challenges.

Dr. Pfaff has published extensively on Long COVID epidemiology, viral reinfection dynamics, and EHR data standardization. She co-developed computational tools like CLARK and FHIR-Ontop-OMOP to enhance clinical data interoperability. Her educational roles include teaching Advanced Databases for Data Science and mentoring trainees in translational informatics.