After completing his undergraduate degree at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Espinoza received an Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) at the Immunotherapy Unit of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. At the NIH, Dr. Espinoza worked on small molecule design, developing therapeutic and research tools. Successively, he attended the USC Keck School of Medicine, earning his MD in 2010. He completed his pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in 2013, and in 2014 he became an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the USC Keck School of Medicine. During his time at CHLA, Dr. Espinoza’s clinical time focused on complex care coordination and obesity management, while his research focused on informatics, medical devices, health equity, and global health. In 2016, he joined the team at CTIP (The West Coast Consortium for Technology & Innovation Pediatrics) and took over as Director and Principal Investigator in 2018 with a new $6.6 million FDA grant. In addition to CTIP, he held a number of leadership roles in informatics and innovation, including serving as the Co-Director of Clinical Research Informatics Core for the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Medical Director of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Innovation Studio, Methods and Data Core Director for the Southern California Center for Latino Health, and Research Lead for the International Digital Health Team. In 2023, Dr. Espinoza was recruited to Lurie Children’s to become the inaugural Chief Research Informatics Officer (CRIO) for Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute and Associate Director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Data Science at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Dr. Espinoza’s research portfolio includes health information systems integration, social determinants of health, geocoded contextual data, regulatory science and medical device development, and patient generated health data in diabetes, obesity, and asthma. As a clinician, he will provide inpatient care a member of the Division of Hospital-Based Medicine. His overall goal as a researcher, physician, and advocate is to identify, refine, and innovate approaches to using data and technology to improve health outcomes and narrow the health gap faced by marginalized communities in the United States and abroad.
Dr. Espinoza’s academic interests are complemented by his experiences outside of medicine; in 2010 he co-founded a digital media production company that worked with television, film, web, and mobile technologies. In this endeavor he partnered with the entertainment and healthcare industries
