Forward in Health: AI in Health Care

Alan Kaplan, MD, serves as CEO of UW Health, a multi-state academic health system affiliated with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and comprised of six main hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois, and more than 1,800 faculty physicians and 24,000 total employees providing care to more than 800,000 patients annually.

Dr. Kaplan is best characterized as a builder of innovative, transformational and long-lasting partnerships. In his current role he led the post-merger integration of the hospital system and the faculty physician group practice, facilitated a financially integrated Joint Operating Agreement with a non-owned community hospital and expanded a provider-owned health plan by offering equal governance to regional health systems.

Kaplan’s leadership through the turbulent pandemic era positioned UW Health for continued growth through strong fiscal management, innovative workforce strategies and a forward-looking approach to diversity and health equity. Kaplan maintains a strong focus on patient care and serving the academic mission.

Scott W. Rathgaber, MD, serves Emplify Health’s patients, staff and community partners as chief executive officer and a board-certified gastroenterologist.

Dr. Rathgaber served as CEO of La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Gundersen Health System from 2015 to December 2022. When Gundersen merged with Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Bellin Health, Rathgaber became CEO of the new organization, Emplify Health.

Rathgaber joined Gundersen Health System’s gastroenterology unit in 1998 and accepted his first leadership role as gastroenterology section chief in 2005. He served on the Gundersen Board of Governors and on the Gundersen Board of Trustees prior to his appointment to medical vice president in 2012, where he managed hospital operations, pharmacy and several clinical departments.

Rathgaber is a fellow with the American Gastroenterological Association and is a member of the American College of Gastroenterology. Before joining Gundersen, Rathgaber spent five years caring for patients at Burns Clinic in Petoskey, MI, in the gastroenterology and hepatology departments.

Rathgaber holds a medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency at the University of Minnesota, followed by a fellowship in gastroenterology at Indiana University. In 2022, he completed a master’s in servant leadership at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His undergraduate degree is from Wabash College in Indiana.

Nita Ahuja, MD, MBA, is the dean of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and UW–Madison’s vice chancellor for medical affairs. She also serves as rotating chair or vice chair of the board of the UW Hospitals and Clinics Authority and is a professor in the Department of Surgery. Dr. Ahuja holds the Robert Turell Distinguished Chair in Medical Leadership. A renowned surgeon-scientist, she has held top roles at some of the nation’s leading research universities and health systems.

Ahuja is a cancer-care innovator whose treatment approaches and research have garnered international recognition. She is an expert in the treatment of sarcomas and complex gastrointestinal cancers, and her innovative surgical and heated chemotherapy approaches have drawn patients from around the world seeking treatment for difficult metastatic cancers.

A passionate advocate for interdisciplinary approaches to medicine and translating discoveries into treatments, Ahuja has a long history of leading collaborative and cutting-edge research aimed at improving cancer outcomes. Her research laboratory identifies and develops biomarkers to allow early detection of pancreatic and colorectal cancers using patients’ genetic information. She has published more than 300 scholarly articles and book chapters to advance both the surgical and basic science fields.

In May 2025, Ahuja became the tenth dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. She is the first woman to serve in this role.

Prior to joining the school, she was the chair of the Department of Surgery at the Yale School of Medicine for seven years. She also served as the surgeon-in-chief for the Yale New Haven Health System. A skilled and respected leader, Ahuja greatly advanced the mission of Yale’s Department of Surgery. Under her leadership, research funding tripled to more than $17 million, improving its Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research ranking from 47 to 16. As a champion of a positive organizational culture, she instituted multiple initiatives aimed at increasing collaboration, celebrating the successes of faculty, staff and learners, and fostering an inclusive environment. Prior to her time at Yale, Ahuja was a faculty member and leader in the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University.

Ahuja is a board member of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the representative body serving all accredited U.S. and Canadian medical schools and teaching hospitals, and chair of the AAMC’s Council of Faculty and Academic Societies. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. She is also a member of several of the nation’s most prestigious academic societies, including the American Surgical Association, Society of Surgical Oncology, and Society of University Surgeons. Among other accolades, she has earned the William J. Reinhoff, Jr. Scholar Award, the American Surgical Association Fellowship and the Society of Surgical Oncology Clinical Investigator Award.

Ahuja earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland in biology and mathematics and received her medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine. She completed a general surgery residency and surgical oncology fellowship at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Ahuja also holds an MBA from Johns Hopkins University.

Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, PhD, is the founding dean of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s College of Computing & Artificial Intelligence (CAI), where he is also a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences. Remzi co-leads a research group with Professor Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau. Together, they have graduated 37 PhD students and won numerous best-paper awards; many of their innovations are used by commercial systems. For their work, the two received the 2018 ACM-SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award for outstanding leadership, innovation and impact in storage and computer systems research. Remzi was named a Fellow of the ACM for contributions to storage and computer systems, and a Fellow of the AAAS for distinguished contributions to computer systems research and development of computing systems with concomitant devotion to computing education for everyone. He has won the SACM Professor-of-the-Year Award seven times, the Rosner Excellent Educator Award, and the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award. The operating systems book he co-authored with Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau, OSTEP, is free to all, has been downloaded millions of times yearly and is used at hundreds of institutions worldwide. 

Bio coming soon.

Bio coming soon.

Maja Waldron, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research develops statistical methods for trustworthy and efficient AI, with a focus on uncertainty quantification, conformal prediction, and deep probabilistic modeling. Before joining UW–Madison, she was a research scientist at the Bosch Center for AI.