Ravy K. Vajravelu, MD, MSCE

Dr. Vajravelu's long-term research goal is to develop precision medicine tools that inform therapeutic decision making in gastroenterology by integrating insights from across biomedical science. He is pursuing this goal through three complementary objectives:

(1) To design biostatistical methods to efficiently analyze high-dimensional clinical datasets
(2) To build epidemiologic models of gastroenterology conditions such as colorectal cancer, Barrett’s esophagus, and gastroesophageal reflux
(3) To develop informatics approaches to integrate diverse biomedical data for clinical prediction.

These research objectives are funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (https://reporter.nih.gov/search/UgkJORp_90y2gPXCt1PjnQ/projects). By completing these objectives, Dr. Vajravelu and his multidisciplinary research team aim to develop algorithms to provide gastroenterology patients and providers with precision screening and therapeutics recommendations.

Dr. Vajravelu is a gastroenterologist at VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System. He diagnoses and treats general gastroenterology conditions such as gastroesophageal reflux, abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, and gastrointestinal bleeding. He performs colorectal cancer screening by colonoscopy.

As a teaching attending at VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, Dr. Vajravelu trains of gastroenterology fellows in inpatient gastroenterology consultation, outpatient gastroenterology practice, and gastrointestinal endoscopy. He particularly enjoys teaching medical trainees about consensus guidelines, especially in relation to knowledge gaps in the literature that may adversely affect patient care. He also teaches prediction modeling and machine learning to epidemiology graduate students. He hopes to help trainees identify the topics and techniques they will pursue in their careers to advance patient care.