Pakistani-born surgeon appointed chief AI officer at world's first engineering-based medical school

ISLAMABAD (Web Desk) - Pakistani-born surgeon-scientist and academic leader Adil Haider has been appointed the inaugural Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, a US medical school designed from its inception to integrate engineering, medicine and data science, the institution said in a press release this week.

Carle Illinois, jointly operated by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Carle Health, is widely described as the world’s first engineering-based medical school, with a curriculum that embeds computational thinking, systems engineering and innovation into physician training. The appointment reflects a growing push by academic medical institutions to formally embed artificial intelligence into education, research and clinical practice.

“By establishing the role of chief AI officer, Carle Illinois is signaling that artificial intelligence is not peripheral, but foundational to the future of medicine,” CI MED Dean Mark Cohen was quoted as saying in a press release on Wednesday.

“Dr. Haider brings a unique combination of academic rigor, clinical expertise, and entrepreneurial experience. His leadership will help ensure that AI at Carle Illinois is innovative, ethical, and meaningfully improves health outcomes, transforming our clinical, research, innovation, and educational missions for the future.”

In the newly created role, Haider will lead the strategic vision, development and responsible deployment of artificial intelligence across the medical college, focusing on AI-enabled medical education, translational research and clinical innovation, according to the statement.

In addition to his academic role, Haider will also serve as medical director for research informatics at Carle Foundation Hospital, where he will work to align AI-driven research with real-world clinical practice across the Carle Health system.

“I am honored and excited to join Carle Illinois College of Medicine at such a pivotal moment,” Haider said. “There is no other institution intentionally designed to bring engineering, medicine, and data science together in this way. The opportunity here is not simply to adopt AI, but to define how it should be built, governed, and deployed to improve human health.”

Haider joins Carle Illinois after serving for more than six years as dean of the Aga Khan University Medical College in Pakistan, where the institution expanded its research funding, entered global rankings and secured multiple international accreditations, including ACGME-International and AACME.

He previously held senior academic and clinical leadership roles in the United States, including at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Johns Hopkins University, where he worked as a trauma surgeon and outcomes researcher.

Haider has also founded two health technology companies. His startup Doctella was later acquired by Masimo, while Boston Health AI, a clinical intelligence platform he founded more recently, operates in the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

At the University of Illinois, Haider will also serve as a visiting professor in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, further linking medical education with advanced computing and data science.