Podcast/Video Interviews by Stephen Ibaraki

A Chat with Caroline Chung: Vice President, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, and Co-Director of the Institute for Data Science in Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center

This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Caroline Chung.

Caroline Chung is Vice President, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, and Co-Director of the Institute for Data Science in Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center where she is a tenured professor in Radiation Oncology and Diagnostic Imaging. She has a clinical practice focused on (central nervous system) CNS malignancies and a computational imaging research lab focused on quantitative imaging, computational modeling and digital twins to enable individualized, high precision cancer treatment. Her research has been recognized through awards including the Alliance Scholar Award in Honor of Dr. Emil "Tom" Frei III and the Andrew Sabin Foundation Fellowship.

Throughout her career, she has taken her systems thinking and approaches combined with combinatorial and collaborative mindset to bring together interdisciplinary teams crossing clinical, academic/research, industry, regulatory and community to tackle foundational challenges, enable clinical translation and implementation to impact patient care while pursuing blue-sky discovery and development. While an assistant professor at the University of Toronto and clinician-scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Center at the University Health Network, she established one of the first multidisciplinary brain metastasis programs named the Bob and Andree Fitzhenry Brain Metastasis Program with an accompanying training fellowship. Once recruited to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, she has established multiple efforts to enable quantitative imaging and measurement for clinically impactful utilization and interpretation of data through a collaborative team science approach, including the Tumor Measurement Initiative (TMI) and establishment of Context Engine as the proprietary data management framework.

Internationally, she serves as Co-Chair of the Quantitative Imaging for Assessment of Response in Oncology Committee of the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements (ICRU), founding co-president of the Quantitative Medical Imaging Coalition (QMIC) (https://QMIC.org), co-chair of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) AI Community of Practice, and associate editor of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. She has also served as a vice-chair of the Quantitative Imaging Biomarker Alliance of the Radiological Society of North America, member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)-appointed committee addressing Foundational Research Gaps and Future Directions for Digital Twins and the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Working Group (WG) on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Additionally, she has engaged in advisory roles, co-development and partnerships with industry partners through to CE mark and FDA approval of medtech devices, clinical trials and clinical implementation of technology, along with serving as a member of the Forbes Tech Council.

With a passion to inspire, support and uplift the next generation, she also serves as the Chair of a non-profit organization focused on fostering leadership, mentorship and sponsorship to support the broad community and team needed to advance cancer treatment and care called Women in Cancer-All in Cancer (www.womenincancer.com), inclusive of the clinical, research, STEM, and industry communities.