Atul Butte (1969-2025) Bibliography - The Works of an Innovator - by Category

Atul Butte's numerous accomplishments during his short, 55-years, defy the limits of a list. However, here we provide hundreds of references - a digital paper trail of the life of an innovator.

Jul 28, 2026

Atul Butte X/Twitter page showing the pinned post, referenced in the caption, and the words" Atul Butte Bibliography" - and the talks, photos, historical timeline and other material which are part of a growing digital record of his works — “All the date in the world will not make a difference, unless there are people ready to use it.” This pinned X/Twitter post was another method Dr. Butte used to emphasis a point....

In honor of Dr. Atul Butte, this digital paper trail, with links to hundreds, if not thousands, of online source documentation, among others, begins with one of many places where Dr. Butte was prolific - on social media. It then covers his publications, awards, media - the things he said and the things others said about him. Together, they became the source of articles written about his life over the past year since he passed away in 2025. Here, for the colleague or curious reader, perhaps this list will serve as a single source of the broadest line-up of his accomplishments - for you to interpret and possibly use to build upon, and thereby contribute to, his vision and your own - the vision of tackling the world’s most complex health challenges through computational methods, starting with data.

For those who would like to contribute, please visit: Memorial Fund - Dr. Atul Butte Memorial Fund for MPNST

About Atul Butte (1969–2025)

Atul Butte - Key facts

Pioneer of computational health, helping establish a discipline that united biology, computer science, artificial intelligence, and clinical care. His thesis: He believed that the enormous amount of health and medical data already being collected contains discoveries waiting to be found. By working across medicine and computer science, he showed that researchers could turn those data into new medical knowledge, better treatments, and improved care for patients around the world.
6 premier institutions where he studied, trained, or served: Brown University, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, MIT, Stanford University, and UCSF.
~400 scientific publications (H-index 121), and 27 U.S. and international patents, 25 consecutive years of NIH research funding, and numerous awards and honors.
100+ trainees
3 biotechnology companies founded/co-founded, including 2 successful exits (Personalis IPO; Carmenta acquisition).
Numerous Awards and Honors: Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence, National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Open Science Champion of Change and many others.
100+ invited talks and lectures publicly available online, including a TEDMED Talk (2012) and U.S. Congressional testimony (2021), and 34.8K+ posts on X/Twitter and LinkedIn (see below)

Public Leadership and Relations/Communications

Long before science communication became commonplace on social media, Dr. Butte recognized that accelerating discovery required sharing ideas widely—with scientists, clinicians, entrepreneurs, policymakers, patients, and the public. He became one of the field’s most visible ambassadors for computational health. His research and ideas reached audiences far beyond academia through scientific journals, mainstream media, conferences, digital platforms, and online communities.

2012 – Delivered a widely viewed TEDMED Talk, helping introduce computational health and biomedical data science to broad scientific and public audiences
2021 – Testified before the U.S. Congress on the role of biomedical data, artificial intelligence, and precision medicine in accelerating cures
Delivered hundreds of invited keynote addresses, lectures, and conference presentations throughout his career
Approximately 100 presentations remain publicly available online, documenting only a portion of his exhaustive speaking career
Early adopter of social media, podcasts, blogs, webinars, interviews, and video to rapidly disseminate discoveries, explain complex science, promote open science, and foster collaboration across the global biomedical community

Early Childhood

Grew up in New Jersey, and was inspired from childhood by two worlds—his father, a biology teacher at a community college, and his mother, who, as an adult learner, became a computer programmer —naturally led him to combine biology and computing.

Career Highlights

Atul Butte, MD, PhD, was a pioneering physician-scientist, entrepreneur, educator, and scientific leader who helped establish the modern field of computational health by bringing together medicine, biology, computer science, artificial intelligence, and data science to transform biomedical research and patient care. Throughout his career, he connected worlds that rarely intersected—academia and industry, research and clinical care, engineering and medicine, startups and universities, government and science—to accelerate discovery and improve human health.

Social Media Accounts - 34.8K posts in 15 years (~ 7 posts each day)

Dr. Butte used social media to disseminate information and to engage in dialogues with his colleagues. He engaged in straight-forward ways to share news and helped those new to the field follow important updates. He also used a humorous style and natural sense of enthusiasm, leading with statements like “Whoa.” He continually reinforced a single thesis, and therefore, helped reinforce it and encourage others to join him. This may explain why he never changed his pinned Tweet, posted on May 30, 2019: “All the data in the world will not make a difference, unless there are people ready to use it.”

Biographies

Education and Career

Dr. Butte studied, trained, and worked at many of America’s leading institutions in computer science, medicine, engineering, and biomedical research, uniquely combining expertise from Silicon Valley, academic medicine, and health care.

1987–1991 – Brown University, BS in Computer Science
- Summer 1989 – Software Engineer, Microsoft (Excel team)
- 1990–1991 – Software Engineer, Apple Computer (System 7 team)
1991–1995 – MD, Brown University
1995–2000 – Residency and Fellowship, Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School, Pediatrics, Pediatric Endocrinology
1998–2004 – PhD, Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His PhD thesis: “Exploring Genomic Medicine Using Integrative Biology PhD in Health Sciences and Technology (Harvard Medical School–MIT),” 2004
2005–2015 – Faculty, Stanford University School of Medicine; Chief of the Division of Systems Medicine
2015–2025 – Faculty, University of California, San Francisco; Founding Director, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute
2018 - 2025 – Inaugural Chief Data Scientist, University of California Health

Awards and Honors

Dr. Butte received many of the highest honors in medicine, biomedical engineering, biomedical informatics, and science, reflecting his influence across multiple disciplines.

2025 – Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2024 – Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence, American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI/AMIA) - the highest honor in biomedical informatics
2024 – Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics, Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP)
2024 - Academy of Medical Educators Excellence in Mentoring Award for UCSF Teaching Faculty
2022 – Elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
2021 – Elected Fellow, International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)
2019 – Elected Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)
2015 – Elected Member, National Academy of Medicine (NAM)
2014 – E. Mead Johnson Award for Research in Pediatrics, Society for Pediatric Research
2013 – White House Champion of Change in Open Science, Obama Administration
2013 – Kavli Frontiers Fellow, National Academy of Sciences
2013 – Elected Member, American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI)
2009 – Elected Fellow, American College of Medical Informatics (FACMI)

Policy Publications

Dr. Butte worked diligently to engage all stakeholders important to computational health. They included those creating and regulating policy.

Written Testimony of Atul Butte, MD, PhD Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor, University of California, San Francisco, Director, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute and Chief Data Scientist, University of California Health Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health Hearing entitled “The Future of Biomedicine: Translating Biomedical Research into Personalized Health Care.” December 8, 2021

Press and Recordings

Dr. Butte authored nearly 400 scientific publications, with research repeatedly featured in popular media outlets, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Wired. Please see those featured during his lifetime, and please contact us to add more to this growing list of press publications and recordings. For more recordings, please visit this YouTube search page.

Scientific Contributions, Leadership and Publications

Scientific Contributions

Over three decades, Dr. Butte became one of the world’s most influential biomedical data scientists, demonstrating how existing biomedical data could be reused to accelerate discovery, improve clinical care, and shorten the path from research to patient care. See also Google Patents and Google Scholar.

NIH-funded investigator for 25 consecutive years
Inventor on 27 U.S. and international patents, spanning computational drug discovery, genomics, diagnostics, transplantation, artificial intelligence, and precision medicine (see Google Patents or Justia Patent Portfolio)
Author of nearly 400 scientific publications
Research cited more than 200,000 times
Research featured by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and numerous leading scientific and international media outlets

Scientific Leadership

A pioneer of computational health, Dr. Butte helped establish a discipline that integrates medicine, biology, computer science, artificial intelligence, and data science to accelerate biomedical discovery and improve patient care. His work transformed how biomedical data are used to understand disease, discover new therapies, and advance precision medicine.

Founding Director, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (BCHSI), University of California, San Francisco (2015–2025)
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor, UCSF
Chief Data Scientist, University of California Health, leading AI and data science initiatives across one of the nation’s largest academic health systems.
Pioneer in biomedical informatics—the science of transforming health and biological data into actionable medical knowledge—and in precision medicine, using those discoveries to personalize disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Scientific Publications

Atul Butte built tools in translational bioinformatics to make sense of large genomic and clinical data sets to solve new classes of problems in Oncology. He published nearly 400 scientific publications, focused on the following areas of interest in computational health: (1) Cancer and Precision Oncology; (2) Clinical Research Informatics; (3) Computational Pharmacology; and (4) Very Large Data Molecular Measurements, and includes these foundational pieces. Please also reference Atul Butte on Google Scholar for additional scientific publications.

Discovering functional relationships between RNA expression and chemotherapeutic susceptibility using relevance networks (PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 10, 2000) — In this pioneering 2000 PNAS paper, cited 1,400+ times, Atul Butte and colleagues introduced a network-based method for linking gene expression patterns with cancer drug responses, demonstrating how large-scale genomic data could be mined to identify genes that influence chemotherapy sensitivity and generate new biological hypotheses.
Mutual information relevance networks: functional genomic clustering using pairwise entropy measurements, Pacific Symposium of Biocomputing, 2000 - In this pioneering 2000 paper, Atul Butte and Isaac Kohane introduced Mutual Information Relevance Networks, a novel computational method for discovering biologically meaningful relationships among thousands of genes by identifying patterns of coordinated gene expression, helping lay the foundation for modern gene network analysis and systems biology.
Translational Bioinformatics Applications in Genome Medicine (Genome Medicine, June 29, 2009) — Introduced the concept that existing biomedical datasets are reusable scientific assets and can themselves become engines of discovery, laying the foundation for modern translational bioinformatics.
Discovery and Preclinical Validation of Drug Indications Using Compendia of Public Gene Expression Data (Science Translational Medicine, August 17, 2011) — Cited 962 times, this paper demonstrated that comparing disease and drug gene-expression signatures can systematically identify new therapeutic uses for existing drugs, launching computational drug repurposing.
Translational Bioinformatics: Linking the Molecular World to the Clinical World (Yearbook of Medical Informatics, June, 2012) — A landmark review describing the discipline of translational bioinformatics and the integration of genomics, molecular biology, and clinical data to improve healthcare. (While often referred to conceptually as a 2008 milestone because of the emergence of the field, this widely cited review was published in 2012.)
Personal omics profiling reveals dynamic molecular and medical phenotypes, Cell, March 16, 2012 — In this landmark 2012 Cell paper, cited 1,550+ times, Atul Butte and collaborators showed that comprehensive, longitudinal analysis of an individual’s genome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, and clinical data can reveal dynamic molecular changes associated with health, disease onset, and responses to environmental factors—demonstrating the potential of “personal omics” for truly personalized medicine.
Translational bioinformatics: coming of age, JAMA, October - November, 2015 — In this influential 2008 perspective, cited 170+ times, Atul Butte argued that the explosion of biomedical data and advances in computing had ushered in the era of translational bioinformatics (a term he invented) —transforming vast amounts of biological data into actionable knowledge to improve prediction, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease.
Digitally Portraying the Tissue Cellular Heterogeneity Landscape (Genome Biology, 2017) — Introduced xCell, a computational method for inferring immune and stromal cell types from bulk gene-expression data, transforming cancer immunology and studies of the tumor microenvironment.
MI-CLAIM: Minimum Information About Clinical Artificial Intelligence Modeling (Nature Medicine, 2020) — Cited 500+ times, established reporting standards for clinical AI models, emphasizing transparency, reproducibility, validation, and clinical utility.
Artificial Intelligence-From Starting Pilots to Scalable Privilege, JAMA Oncology, October 1, 2023 — In this 2023 JAMA Oncology editorial, cited by 23, Atul Butte argued that artificial intelligence should move beyond isolated pilot projects to become a “scalable privilege”—using AI to extend the expertise of leading medical centers so that high-quality, equitable care becomes accessible to patients everywhere.

Companies founded/co-founded by Atul Butte

Believing that discoveries should benefit patients as quickly as possible, Dr. Butte translated academic research into clinical practice through entrepreneurship, commercialization, and startup mentorship. See also: Google Patents, Google Scholar, and Crunchbase.

Atul Butte founded or co-founded three venture-backed companies, one of which was acquired and the other went public.

NuMedii (2008) – Founder and Chief Scientific Officer; pioneered AI-driven computational drug repurposing using genomic and molecular data.
Personalis (2011) – Co-founder; commercialized whole-genome sequencing and clinical genomics to advance precision medicine. Personalis completed its IPO on Nasdaq (PSNL) in 2019.
Carmenta Bioscience (2011) – Co-founder; developed biomarker-based diagnostics for maternal and fetal health using systems biology and metabolomics. The company was acquired by Progenity in 2015.

Press/Recordings 2025-2026 (after Dr. Butte passed away)

This is updated as of Summer, 2026. Please contact us with additional press/recordings to add to this growing list.

Social Media Tributes to Atul Butte and the BCHSI Legacy

Impact
1. Peter J. Embí, M.D., M.S., Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Medicine: on Friday, June 13th, we lost a powerful, dedicated, brilliant, innovative, compassionate and inspirational voice in health and biomedicine, Atul Butte. In addition to extraordinary professional contributions, Atul was a loving husband, father, and a cherished friend to many of us. His loss is being felt far and wide.
2. Abhijeet Gholap, Board member and investor: He was not only an incredibly intelligent and accomplished scientist, but also someone whose presence left a lasting impact on everyone fortunate enough to know him.
3. Abhishek Battacharya, MD, Chief Resident, NYU Langone: I have been reflecting on the profound impact @atulbutte had on me, my family, and the biomedical community.
4. Alice Tang, Bioengineer, data and machine learning scientist, MD, PhD candidate, UCSF, UC Berkeley: ...How a vision can lead to fostering a generation of innovators and researchers.
5. Amy Abernathy, Board of Trustees, Duke University, Cofounder Highlander Health: Your infectious enthusiasm will power generations. As you would say, “Wow”.”
6. Anna Dr. Parker, PhD, Chief Strategy Officer, Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, University of Southern California: A pioneer in the fields of biomedical informatics, data science, RWE, and AI, he integrated and leveraged these fields to transform medical research and care. His enthusiasm was infectious and his optimism for moving discoveries to patients was reflected in the myriad biotech companies he founded. RIP Atul!:
7. Tal Behar, Co-founder & President, PMWC (est. 2009): Atul was a true pioneer in biomedical informatics and precision medicine
8. Vivek Rudrapatna: It is with a mix of emotions that I finally announce this work, my very last w/ @atulbutte. Atul believed in the power of open data and our ability to learn from the data we already have to improve healthcare now. This work is a tribute to this belief, made possible by his career
9. Yves Lussier, MD, Professor and Chair @ U of Utah School of Medicine | Biomedical Informatics Dept.: Even data danced when he looked at it with joy.
Community and humanity
1. Mark Laret, I’m so deeply saddened. What a legacy, what an intellect, what energy and enthusiasm, what a friend and colleague, and what a remarkable human. The world is dimmer today without Atul.
2. Euan Ashly, Chair of Medicine at Stanford: The world is darker today for the loss of his light. (The thread includes many thoughts and memories worth noting)
3. Marina Sirota, PhD, Professor at UCSF, Acting Director, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute He had a unique ability to elevate people around him, making them feel good about themselves and the work that they did which in turn inspired them to grow…. I will do my very best to continue your legacy at University of California, San Francisco and beyond. Rest in peace and may your memory be an inspiration to many generations to come.
4. Angela Risk-Jackson, Chief Operating Officer, UCSF Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute: The event was equal parts touching tribute from Atul’s colleagues and collaborators, recognition of the foundational work he undertook as director of the BCHSI, and inspiring vision for the future of computational health science. I’m honored to be a part of this incredible community!
5. Chirag Patel: He saw potential in me and turned it into opportunity-- for me, and so many others.
6. Christopher Longhurst, MD, CEO Seattle Children’s Hospital: My heart is broken for the loss of my friend, colleague, and mentor Atul Butte, for his wife (Gini) Deshpande, his daughter Kimi, and for all of us who benefited from his giant intellect, smile, friendship, mentorship, and huge heart. 💔
7. DJ Patil, Investor, entrepreneur, public policy, former U.S Chief Data Officer: Atul brought the full force of Atul to where things work and where they don’t. He didn’t do it for himself. He did it to motivate everyone else for how healthcare should operate.
8. Laurel Skurko, Marketing and Administrative Leader, Higher Education: From his visionary leadership to the profound understanding of what it means to be human. (Link includes video tribute)
9. UC Tech News: While his absence is deeply felt, the “Butte decade of impact” is alive and expanding, through the people, infrastructure and collaborations he inspired and carefully set into motion
10. Jonathan Eisen, UC Davis: I am devastated by the death of my colleague /friend @atulbutte - my last interaction with him started when he offered me support when I was doing radiation treatment for a brain tumor. He was always thinking about others.
11. Ryan T. Scott, Scientist, AI for Life in Space: Much love Jonathan ❤️. A tremendously sad day, only matched by all the instances of enthusiasm, inspiration, joy, and contributions I’ve been thinking and revisiting from him non-stop
Optimism and taking a new route - shooting for the stars
1. Shai Shen-Orr, Professor at Technion, Chief Scientist CytoReason, Director Zimin Institute for AI Solutions in Healthcare, Co-CSO Human Immunome Project: Atul built amazing teams, trained and mentored them to create a better future. Creating positive change was his defining characteristic. A true Trekkie, Atul was all about a better future, infectiously positive and inspiring all he met to shoot for the stars.
2. Daniel Kraft, MD: One of the ways to remember the remarkable Atul Butte is through sharing his infectious enthusiasm and unwavering belief in the power of data to transform healthcare: “What an exciting time to be in biomedical research today” and “In academia we’re starting to finally learn that if you want to change the world, you can’t just keep writing papers about it, you have to take it outside of the university and take it further.”
3. Jessie Tenenbaum, PhD, FACMI, FAMIA, FIAHSI, Associate Professor, Duke University School of Medicine | Senior Data Strategist, NC HealthConnex | Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Data Science and Society at UNC Chapel Hill: Atul’s extensive “disclosures” slide was a point of pride for him. He pointed out that industry is not “the dark side.” Without industry, we can’t translate discoveries into actual products that help people….Rest in peace, Atul. You are gone MUCH too soon, but accomplished so much. It fills me with despair to think of all the things you would have achieved in coming years if things hadn’t worked out the way they did. But you leave many trainees behind (cc Marina Sirota), and your work has inspired so many. We’ll do our best to run with the many batons you’ve passed on with your legacy.
4. Sherri Douville, CEO, Medigram: [Shared highlights of Dr. Butte’s career] Atul’s vision for data-driven healthcare will continue to shape the future.
Computer savvy and risk-taking
1. Daniel Kraft, MD: “May his memory be a blessing. What a huge loss of such an amazing human, physician, scientist and leader. I was lucky to know Atul since our undergraduate days at Brown, and then as residents at Boston Children's, where of course, he hacked the then nascent electronic lab system to enable each intern/resident coming in for pre-rounds in the morning to make an integrated print out of the overnight detailed lab results for each of our specific patients.” - Dr. De: “That tracks.”
Memorable Atul Butte quotes shared on social media after Dr. Butte’s passing
1. Dvir Aran, Biomedical Data Science Lab; Associate Professor, Technion, Israel: Between alarms and sheltering, I learned last night that my postdoc mentor, Professor Atul Butte @atulbutte, has passed away, and he is only 55 years old. This is devastating news 💔. But Atul was much more than his achievements. He possessed something rare in science - infectious positivity…. After every talk he gave, students would line up to tell him how he motivated them to do something big with their lives….Another rare trait was his kindness and generosity with credit. Atul taught me: “credit is indefinitely divisible.” In a field where people often take undeserved credit, this was inspiring.
2. Robin Farmanfarmaian, Public speaker, entrepreneur: Atul Butte was one of the greatest men I’ve ever known. I still remember when Atul coined the phrase, “AI is scalable privilege.” That line captures both his brilliance and his deep empathy. He dedicated his career to improving patient outcomes and saving lives through his work at Stanford and UCSF hospitals
3. UCSF Health: “Ideas change everything.” This mantra from one of Dr. Butte’s TED Talks inspired a generation of scientists to merge clinical insight with computational innovation. Under his leadership, UCSF became a global hub for artificial intelligence, informatics and translational science — advancing health care in service of patients and discovery alike.

STANFORD CELEBRATION OF LIFE TRIBUTES TO DR. BUTTE

At the core of a leader - a love story
1. “After his diagnosis, we started a new ritual. We would clink our mugs and say, ‘Cheers, another morning.’ Even from the hospital, he insisted on continuing this ritual, determined to savor every moment we had together….”So, Atul, wherever you are today, cheers. Here’s to another morning.” — Gini Deshpande, PhD, Dr. Butte’s wife and a co-founder of NuMedii,
2. “Friends who’ve known me for decades were stunned when I told them that just 5 seconds after meeting him, I knew I was going to marry this man.” — Gini Deshpande, PhD
3. “He proposed to Gini by taking one of her manuscripts, edited it in PostScript, changed a part to say ‘Will you marry me?’ and came over to Gini and said, ‘Look, they got this wrong in your paper.’ And she got all ready to be outraged.” — Jessie Tenenbaum, PhD – Duke North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services Duke University School of Medicine
4. “Atul’s name carries deep meaning. It means incomparable, one of a kind, unique. And in every aspect of his life, Atul truly lived up to that name.” — Gini Deshpande, PhD, Dr. Butte’s wife and a co-founder of NuMedii
Putting people first; Mentorship:
1. “In a world that often moves too fast, what Atul reminded us was that we should spend our time on problems that matter with people who matter.” — Philip Payne, PhD, Washington University
2. “Here’s something about Atul that you can all emulate. And you don’t need his off-the-charts IQ. You don’t need his one-of-a-kind smile. And you don’t need his boundless energy. Atul showed up.” — Kenneth Mandl, MD, Boston Children’s Hospital
3. “Despite the incredible demands on his time, Atul was never too busy — and I mean that, never too busy — to mentor a junior colleague, to celebrate a friend’s success, or to share a thought about the absurdities of academic life.” — Philip , PhD, Washington University
4. “A gentleman in Turkey: ‘I only met Atul once. It was at a keynote in Morocco. I was so inspired and he followed up a month later with an email to make sure I was working on those ideas.’ He said, ‘Atul completely changed the course of my life, and I only met him that one time.’” — Christopher Longhurst, MD, PhD, Seattle Children’s
A domain expert
1. “Ideas lit the room. He spoke and silence listened. Fire glowed within his eyes. He filled the air and hearts, left them brighter. Even data danced when he looked at it with joy.” — Yves Lussie, MD, Utah School of Medicine
2. “He created a program that screen-scraped the Cerner lab user interface and wrote in this arcane language, PostScript, a program that generated very tight summaries of patient problem lists. The best thing I’d ever seen, ever. We were all scared that Atul would stop doing it, and sure enough when he left we never had it again.” — Isaac “Zak” Kohane, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School
A rare cancer and enduring curiosity
1. “In medicine, we teach: when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. The thing is zebras exist and Atul knew that. He spent his career working to help the zebras. And then ironically he became a zebra….He wasn’t satisfied just being special. He couldn’t just be a zebra. He needed to be the rarest of zebras. Of course. So he had one of the rarer forms of one of the rarest cancers. He was a zebra unicorn.” — Peter Embi, MD, MS, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
2. “He used his own diagnosis, his own disease, to introduce the term ‘scalable privilege.’ He could call any famous cancer institute and get information. But most people couldn’t open those doors. And he believed AI was going to open those doors to everyone around the world.” — Sam Hawgood, MBBS, UCSF
3. “He had an absolute great talent at framing things in ways that were catchy. ‘Scalable privilege.’ Come on. So good.” — Isaac “Zak” Kohane, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School
4. “He would be in every meeting — first in person, then on Zoom, then on Zoom off camera, then on Zoom without audio, but in the chat. Right to the very end.” — Sam Hawgood, MBBS, UCSF
5. “He was on emails and texts with me about institute matters until only a month or two ago, even from the ICU.” — Marina Sirota, PhD, UCSF

Atul Butte: Top 10 Quotes

Enduring Atul Butte quotes and wisdom - Top 10 quotes also known as “Atulisms”

*Sharing credit and mentoring —“Credit is infinitely divisible. Give it away every chance you get. There’s always plenty left for you,” he said, always providing his protege’s credit and encouraging the growth. — In 100’s of personal conversations with his colleagues - those whom he mentored and those whom he mentored about mentoring.
1. Mentorship - be generous and go broad - “Credit is infinitely divisible” - Instead of protecting yourself as the mentor, give it away, and spread your knowledge far and wide. He added, “Set the level of your peers as high as you can. Your peers are all over the world, in countries you’ve never been to. That’s your new level.” — Michigan Omenn
*AI as scalable privilege — “He dreamt up concepts like ‘machine learning healthcare systems’ and ‘AI as scalable privilege’ — As shared by Chris Longhurst, MD, Chief Clinical and Innovation Officer; Executive Director, Jacobs Center for Health Innovation, UC San Diego Health (excerpted from his post on Kudoboard)
* Academia needs to collaborate with industry: “If you want to change the world, you can’t just keep writing papers about it. The science continues in startup companies.” — Said in every talk from 2015 onward. His justification for starting companies.
*Data is frozen knowledge — TEDMED 2012 and others. The most quoted line he ever spoke.
1. “Data is power. Data is Revolution. Data is frozen knowledge — and you and I can bring the heat, the light, the energy to melt that data and let the knowledge free.”
2. “Data, unlike oil, multiplies when shared. Once we let data flow, lifelong discoveries become possible.”
3. “Hiding within those mounds of data is knowledge that could change the life of a patient, or change the world.”
National tragedy: “It will be a national tragedy” - “We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States to collect this data. It will be a national tragedy if we don’t use this data to improve the practice of medicine. Period.” — Samsung Catalyst, LSI, NextMed, Danaher, CHIP. His standard opening or closing.
Slide of significance - Atul Butte’s “conflicts of interest”: “...A lot of people use a slide like this as a slide of shame. For me, this is a slide of significance ... .I think in academia, we’re finally starting to learn that if you want to change the world, you can’t just keep writing papers about it. You have to take it outside of the university and take it further.” - NextMed
Doctors and computers (or doctors and AI): “It’s not going to be doctors versus computers. It’s going to be doctors with computers versus doctors without computers — who refuse to use computers. That’s the real dichotomy.” — Samsung Catalyst
It’s a duty to study every damn thing we do - “It’s not just my responsibility, it should be my duty to study every damn thing we do in our health system, make sure every one of my patients benefits from it.” — LSI
Doctors and computers (or doctors and AI): “It’s not going to be doctors versus computers. It’s going to be doctors with computers versus doctors without computers — who refuse to use computers. That’s the real dichotomy.” — Samsung Catalyst
“A trillion points of data” - “Precisely practicing medicine with a trillion points of data.” — Title of his TEDx, LSI, and UCSF talks. The phrase that became his brand.

Atul Butte: All memorable quotes documented to-date

“These are the phrases Atul repeated across dozens of talks — his rhetorical DNA. Where this matters is repetition: a phrase Atul said in nearly every talk for a decade was not a tic but a thesis he had decided was worth saying again until the field acted on it.” - Dexter Hadley

*Sharing credit and mentoring —“Credit is infinitely divisible. Give it away every chance you get. There’s always plenty left for you,” he said, always providing his protege’s credit and encouraging the growth. — In 100’s of personal conversations with his colleagues - those whom he mentored and those whom he mentored about mentoring.
1. Mentorship - be generous and go broad - “Credit is infinitely divisible” - Instead of protecting yourself as the mentor, give it away, and spread your knowledge far and wide. He added, “Set the level of your peers as high as you can. Your peers are all over the world, in countries you’ve never been to. That’s your new level.” — Michigan Omenn
*AI as scalable privilege — “He dreamt up concepts like ‘machine learning healthcare systems’ and ‘AI as scalable privilege’ — As shared by Chris Longhurst, MD, Chief Clinical and Innovation Officer; Executive Director, Jacobs Center for Health Innovation, UC San Diego Health (excerpted from his post on Kudoboard)
1. AI as Scalable Privilege - “He was in a privileged position. He could call any famous cancer institute and get information on his disease. But most people couldn’t open those kind of doors. And he believed that AI and informatics was going to open those doors to everyone around the world, not just in the US, but literally around the world.” — Sam Hawgood, MBBS, UCSF
*Academia needs to collaborate with industry: “If you want to change the world, you can’t just keep writing papers about it. The science continues in startup companies.” — Said in every talk from 2015 onward. His justification for starting companies.
Companies Are Not the Dark Side - “It is not taboo to talk about companies in academia anymore. It better not be, because this is how we have to get these discoveries to patients. We have no other choice.” — Singularity, CHIP
Data is frozen knowledge — TEDMED 2012 and others. The most quoted line he ever spoke.
1. “Data is power. Data is Revolution. Data is frozen knowledge — and you and I can bring the heat, the light, the energy to melt that data and let the knowledge free.”
2. “Data, unlike oil, multiplies when shared. Once we let data flow, lifelong discoveries become possible.”
3. “Hiding within those mounds of data is knowledge that could change the life of a patient, or change the world.”
National tragedy: “It will be a national tragedy” - “We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States to collect this data. It will be a national tragedy if we don’t use this data to improve the practice of medicine. Period.” — Samsung Catalyst, LSI, NextMed, Danaher, CHIP. His standard opening or closing.
Slide of significance - Atul Butte’s “conflicts of interest”: “...A lot of people use a slide like this as a slide of shame. For me, this is a slide of significance ... .I think in academia, we’re finally starting to learn that if you want to change the world, you can’t just keep writing papers about it. You have to take it outside of the university and take it further.” - NextMed
Doctors and computers (or doctors and AI): “It’s not going to be doctors versus computers. It’s going to be doctors with computers versus doctors without computers — who refuse to use computers. That’s the real dichotomy.” — Samsung Catalyst
It’s a duty to study every damn thing we do - “It’s not just my responsibility, it should be my duty to study every damn thing we do in our health system, make sure every one of my patients benefits from it.” — LSI
“A trillion points of data” - “Precisely practicing medicine with a trillion points of data.” — Title of his TEDx, LSI, and UCSF talks. The phrase that became his brand.
I’m Giving Away the Secrets - “I’m giving you my secrets because there’s so much unmet need out there. We cannot do them all myself.”— LSI, NextMed
“Instead of finding these by accident, how about we find them on purpose using public data?” — Singularity, NextMed, Michigan Omenn
The Italian Man’s Email - “Hello, my name is... I’m an Italian man, 48 years old, three children — a girl, a boy, and a 17-year-old, all with the same wife. On June 5th, they told me I have small cell lung cancer. I know I will not live longer than a few months. My family is desperate. Please, I’d like to try this new cure.” “This is why we’re in this business. It’s an email like this every week or two. We cannot keep saying it’s going to cost a billion dollars for each one of these drugs, it’s going to take 10 years. That is not what patients want to hear.” — Singularity, NextMed
Turn the Crank - “We turn our crank. We got lots of ideas. Here’s a drug. There’s a drug. And where we got a lot of interesting ideas isn’t the new drug, but the new use for the old drug.” — NextMed (said in every talk)
The Next Amgen Starts in a Garage - “I fundamentally believe the next Amgen, the next Genentech, is going to come from your garage. Because when you go home from this meeting, you got more than a million of those samples and every mouse model you want available by credit card. What else do you need to launch a biotech company today?”
“Nobody on my campus knew how to do a rat colonoscopy. So I’m not just outsourcing to save money. I’m outsourcing to get the best damn data in the world.” — Singularity, Michigan Omenn (his biggest laugh line)
“It’s not going to be doctors versus computers. It’s going to be doctors with computers versus doctors without computers — who refuse to use computers. That’s the real dichotomy.” — Samsung Catalyst
Study Every Damn Thing We Do - “It’s not just my responsibility, it should be my duty to study every damn thing we do in our health system, make sure every one of my patients benefits from it.” — LSI
“We can make an impact, but we can’t control everything.” — William Brown, III, PhD, UCSF
And there are so many more: Please send us your own memorable Atulisms
1. “Whoa” (before almost every (Tweet)
2. “My coffee cup is the wettest thing in my laboratory.”
3. His pinned tweet/post from May 30, 2019: “All the data in the world will not make a difference, unless there are people ready to use it.”

Laurel Skurko

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