Dr. Maxim (Max) Topaz, PhD, RN, MA is the Elizabeth Standish Gill Associate Professor at Columbia University School Nursing. He is affiliated with Columbia University Data Science Institute and the Center for Home Care Policy & Research at the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

His research focuses on data science and he finds innovative ways to use the most recent technological breakthroughs, like text or data mining, to improve human health. Dr. Topaz is one of the pioneers in applying natural language processing to data generated by nurses. His current work focuses on developing natural language processing solutions to advance clinical decision-making. In the past, Dr. Topaz was involved with health policy, leadership, and health entrepreneurship. Dr. Topaz's clinical experience is in internal and urgent medicine.

He earned his PhD as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and his Master's and Bachelors' degrees from the University of Haifa, Israel. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Medical School and Brigham Women's Hospital. He published more than 120 articles on topics related to health informatics and received numerous prestigious awards for his work.