Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher, startup founder and prominent voice on the use of biomedical data and AI in healthcare, died on June 13 at the age of 55.
Butte was a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), at the time of his death, where he served as the inaugural director of its Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute (BCHSI; formerly the Institute for Computational Health Sciences) as well as the chief data scientist for the broader University of California Health System.
In a statement, UC Health and UCSF leaders referred to Butte as a "visionary scientist, educator, and leader whose work fundamentally reshaped biomedical research and health care."
"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," wrote Sam Hawgood, Chancellor at UCSF, Dr. Talmadge E. King, Jr., Dean of UCSF School of Medicine, Suresh Gunasekaran President and CEO at UCSF Health and Dr. David Rubin, Executive Vice President at UC Health.
In 2024, Dr. Butte was honored with the Morris F. Collen Award of Excellence, the highest honor in biomedical informatics. He also received the Association for Molecular Pathology’s Award for Excellence for his pioneering work in molecular diagnostics and computational health sciences.
"While we mourn this profound loss, we also celebrate a life lived at the intersection of compassion and computation. Dr. Butte showed us what is possible when we unite data, medicine, and purpose. We honor him by continuing the work he championed – unfreezing data, advancing equitable innovation, and ensuring that discovery always serves humanity," Hawgood, King, Gunasekaran and Rubin wrote in the statement.
Butte was also trained pediatrician who completed his residency and fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital, and spent several years at the Stanford University School of Medicine as a professor of pediatrics and genetics, and eventually chief of its Division of Systems Medicine.
The physician-bioinformatics researcher was listed as an author on nearly 300 papers. In 2013 he was recognized by the Obama administration as a “Champion of Change,” and was elected into the National Academy of Medicine in 2015 as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences earlier this year. He had been elected as a fellow of International Society for Computational Biology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and for years has spoken about his work and the broader field of bioinformatics at academic and industry events.
Butte also cofounded three companies: Personalis, a cancer genomics, data science and personalized test maker that went public in 2019; Carmenta, a preclampsia diagnostics company acquired by Progenity in 2015; and NuMedii, which uses big data to find drug candidates and predictive biomarkers, and is led by Butte’s cofounder and wife Tarangini Deshpande.
Marina Sirota, now acting director of BCHSI, wrote in a letter to the institute's community that Butte had been battling cancer for two and a half years. She highlighted the institute's growth to 90 affiliated faculty under Butte's directorship and the sharing of clinical data across the University of California System under his leadership. She also noted Butte's mentorship when she joined his lab as a graduate student at Stanford nearly 20 years ago.
"But I'm only one of hundreds if not thousands of people that he has inspired," she wrote. "He was a true innovator and a champion. He was very supportive of getting students excited about science early in their career and had numerous high school interns in his lab throughout the years. He was a fierce advocate of women in science. 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."
News of his death was first circulated over the weekend by colleagues on social media, prompting an outpour of remembrances from others familiar with him or his work.
One such post from Shai Shen-Orr, a professor at the Israel Institute of Technology who was mentored by Butte during his postdoc at Stanford, called Butte "a towering visionary for the future of next-generation medicine and … a trailblazer in using computational approaches to further precision medicine. Both at Stanford University and at University of California, San Francisco Atul built amazing teams, trained and mentored them to create a better future.”
Other posts from colleagues and lab members described Butte as “a visionary leader in translational bioinformatics [at] Stanford who reinvented himself as a pioneer of AI in medicine [at] UCSF,” as well as “a big bear of a man. With a huge smile. With love for everyone. With energy that could power a room.”
Butte is survived by his wife, Deshpande, and his daughter. A memorial for Butte will be held "shortly" with a celebration of life event also planned for the coming months, Sirota said in her letter.
"Atul’s loss is deeply felt, but his influence endures—in the lives he touched, the data he unlocked and the future he helped shape. We celebrate his memory with gratitude and resolve to carry forward his vision of 'scalable privilege': a more data-driven, humane, and equitable world," Sirota wrote.