Dr. Emily R. Pfaff received her Masters in Information Science and her PhD in Clinical and Health Informatics, both from the University of North Carolina (UNC). Since 2011, Dr. Pfaff has served in multiple roles in the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS), UNC's CTSA. Dr. Pfaff is currently NC TraCS Co-Director for Informatics and Data Science. She is also Associate Director of UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine's Program on Clinical and Health Informatics. Dr. Pfaff has an academic appointment as Research Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology & Metabolism at UNC Chapel Hill School of Medicine. Dr. Pfaff is nationally known for her work and leadership in the National Covid Cohort Collaborative (N3C), now known as the N3C COVID Enclave. The N3C COVID Enclave is the largest data enclave of de-identified, individual-level clinical data available for COVID-19 research. Dr. Pfaff and others are piloting additional data enclaves as part of the expansion of N3C, the National Clinical Cohort Collaborative.
Recent Publications
- Loon, J, Li, MH, Mehta, S, Ortiz, J, Monrroy, M, Salman, L, Koizumi, N, Faddoul, G, N3C Consortium. Post-nephrectomy outcomes in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 Patients using ACEi, ARB and SGLT2i: a N3C database study. Int Urol Nephrol 2026; : . PubMed PMID:41795760 .
- Gudenas, BL, Ahmad, ST, Englinger, B, Liu, APY, Zhao, M, Paul, L, Hadley, J, Li, Y, Batts, M, Mittal, P et al.. A tumor-associated photoreceptor signature unifies distinct central nervous system malignancies. Cancer Cell 2026; : . PubMed PMID:41791379 .
- Haendel, MA, Ahern, R, Bailey, KB, Bakas, S, Barth-Jones, DC, Bohl, A, Bian, J, Bourne, PE, Boyles, RR, Chute, CG et al.. Governing real-world health data as a public utility. Science 2026; 391 (6789): 993-996. PubMed PMID:41785358 .
- Powers, JP, Shaheen, A, Entwisle, B, Pfaff, ER. Evaluating Redundancy and Biases in EHR Social Determinants of Health Data Screening. medRxiv 2026; : . PubMed PMID:41757190 PubMed Central PMC12934871.
- Chen, Z, Li, B, Chen, Y, Liu, J, Luo, F, Ogunyemi, KO, Ge, Y, Ke, Y, Yang, Y, Chen, X et al.. Mapping spatial and social inequities of long COVID across the United States: a retrospective cohort study. Lancet Reg Health Am 2026; 56 : 101401. PubMed PMID:41732704 PubMed Central PMC12925177.
- Zachariasse, JM, Gutiérrez-Sacristán, A, Makwana, S, Li, X, Bhatnagar, S, Hanauer, DA, Kainth, MK, Morris, M, Rubio-Mayo, P, Sáez, C et al.. Impact of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions on bacterial infections in children: an international electronic health record-based study. BMJ Public Health 2025; 3 (2): e002671. PubMed PMID:41394022 PubMed Central PMC12699615.
- Goschzik, T, Yuan, M, Pfaff, E, Müller, MEB, Mynarek, M, Dörner, E, Jones, DTW, Pfister, SM, Rutkowski, S, Pietsch, T et al.. Recurrent genetic alterations in epigenetically defined pineoblastoma subtypes. Acta Neuropathol Commun 2025; 13 (1): 241. PubMed PMID:41291966 PubMed Central PMC12648887.
- Pfaff, E, Schramm, K, Blattner-Johnson, M, Jones, BC, Stark, S, Balasubramanian, GP, Previti, C, Autry, RJ, Fiesel, P, Sahm, F et al.. Molecular characterization and clinical features of diffuse midline glioma in the pediatric precision oncology registry INFORM. Acta Neuropathol 2025; 150 (1): 42. PubMed PMID:41076459 PubMed Central PMC12515216.
- Powers, JP, Carey, TS, Hargrove, TW, Limburg, A, Udalova, V, Shaheen, A, Bowers, R, Pfaff, ER, Entwisle, B. Caring for Communities: Comparing Health Care System Patient Populations to Regional Populations. J Gen Intern Med 2026; 41 (2): 330-337. PubMed PMID:40963087 PubMed Central PMC12894526.
- Preiss, A, Bhatia, A, Aragon, LV, Baratta, JM, Baskaran, M, Blancero, F, Brannock, MD, Chew, RF, Díaz, I, Fitzgerald, M et al.. Effect of Paxlovid treatment during acute COVID-19 on Long COVID onset: An EHR-based target trial emulation from the N3C and RECOVER consortia. PLoS Med 2025; 22 (9): e1004711. PubMed PMID:40953059 PubMed Central PMC12445499.
