Linda Goodwin RN, PhD enjoyed a nearly five-decade career in nursing and is now a fully retired curious soul. Her career spanned several years in pediatric nursing and labor/delivery clinical roles before she returned to her alma mater and completed a master's degree in Family-Child Nursing from the University of Missouri - Columbia (1976). From there, Linda moved into roles as a clinical nurse specialist, research nurse and, later, took on roles in nursing administration. That role placed her on a path that led to nursing informatics and completing a doctorate that combined nursing and computer science, (specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and expert systems) from the University of Kansas (1992).

Dr. Goodwin joined Duke's faculty in 1996 and launched the first online graduate program in (nursing) informatics in the world. Her early work at Duke combined her faculty role with a clinical role as Team Leader of Duke Medical Center’s nursing informatics specialists. Her pioneering research was the first National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Library of Medicine (NLM), funded machine learning/data mining research in the area of predicting birth outcomes and preterm birth prevention. Her work was also funded, either directly or through partnerships with other researchers, through NINR, NASA, Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology, the Fullterton Foundation, and the Teagle Foundation.  

She has more than 100 publications and presentations at both national and international conferences, and has served on editorial boards for the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the Journal of Biomedical Informatics, the International Journal of Medical Informatics, and Health Care Management Review, among others.  

In retirement, Dr. Goodwin has traveled some and ponders over the similarities and differences in people all over the world. She is dismayed that humans can treat other human beings with such cruelty or disregard, but she has also met with love, laughter, and kindness in every country she has visited. She is incredibly discouraged at the growing divide in our own country; however, she is also an eternal optimist. There is good in the world, lots of it!  And she wants to live in a world where we take care of each other and make the world a better place for every human being…

When she’s not pondering the complexities of life, Linda is still trying to play music (guitar, piano, and violin), infrequently creating stained glass windows, learning Tai Chi and Pickleball, making jewelry, quilting, and gardening. Her very favorite thing is spending time with her two grown children and teenage granddaughter.