Rachel L. Hill, PhD, MS, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Biomedical Informatics, Department of Internal Medicine, at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Her multidisciplinary research program integrates biomedical informatics, biostatistics, data science, machine learning, and translational science to improve the diagnosis, prognostication, and clinical management of pancreatic disease and its associated co-morbidities.Dr. Hill received her PhD from the University of Louisville and completed her postdoctoral training in neurotrauma investigating pharmacological interventions to preserve mitochondrial bioenergetics at University of Kentucky. She subsequently expanded her training, earning a Master of Science in Information Science and a Graduate Certificate in Biostatistics. This diverse background provides a foundation for her current work at the intersection of molecular mechanisms, clinical phenotyping, and predictive analytics.

A major focus of Dr. Hill’s research is pancreatitis and its systemic metabolic complications. Through the NIH-funded Chronic Pancreatitis Clinical Research Consortium and the PROCEED study, she leads and collaborates on investigations examining metabolic biomarkers of pancreatic disease progression and pain, pancreatitis-associated metabolic bone disease, opportunistic CT-based assessment of skeletal health, and pancreatic fluid biomarkers of exocrine function. Her work applies advanced statistical and computational methods to clinical, imaging, and multi-omics datasets to identify clinically actionable biomarkers and improve patient risk stratification.

Dr. Hill’s recent scholarship includes studies of circulating molecular drivers of bone remodeling in pancreatitis, urinary metabolomic signatures of chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic fluid enzyme activity, serum metabolomic signatures for chronic pancreatitis and pain phenotyping, and predictive modeling of metabolic bone disease. Her contributions have been recognized with Young Investigator Travel Awards from the American Pancreatitis Association and the National Pancreas Foundation’s Best Paper Award for the Best Abstract in Pancreatitis. Her long-term goal is to translate integrated biomarker and informatics approaches into precision tools that improve outcomes across the pancreatitis disease continuum.