Hood College symposium to explore artificial intelligence in cancer research and clinical care

Some of the world’s top scientific leaders in the field will highlight the current progress of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in cancer research and clinical care at a scientific symposium hosted by Hood College in partnership with the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, September 2022.  

Cancer researchers are invited to attend the conference, where experts will explore solutions and opportunities to achieve clinical adoption of AI. The event will be held on the Hood College campus at Rosenstock Hall in Frederick, Md. 

This interdisciplinary symposium will showcase presentations that engage AI to address cancer health disparities, cancer patient digital twins, ethical use of AI, clinical adoption, and ways to reduce biases in data. Douglas Lowy, M.D. acting director of the National Cancer Institute, will provide opening remarks. 

“We are grateful for this partnership with Hood College and look forward to hearing from the distinguished group of scientists leading the symposium,” said Ethan Dmitrovsky, M.D., director of Frederick National Laboratory, which is home to state-of-the-art data science technologies. “Seeing ways for the research community to engage artificial intelligence in cancer research will improve clinical care by making practice-changing discoveries.”  

The conference is the second in the Hood College – Frederick National Laboratory Life Sciences Symposium series and builds on the legacy of the prior popular Hood College–National Cancer Institute Oncogene meetings, a national fixture in Frederick for more than 20 years. 

“We are at the cusp of transformative research. This conference is a great opportunity to get a glimpse of what the future holds for cancer care,” said Eric Stahlberg, Ph.D., director of Cancer Data Science Initiatives at FNL.  

This year’s symposium presentations will explore advances in integrating mechanistic modeling with AI, improving measurement and reproducibility, standards and references, AI model improvement, AI for hypothesis-generation, and cancer patient digital twins. Presenters will address disparities in data, models for point of care as well as uncertainty quantification, and understand limits of applicability. The final day of the symposium will introduce federated learning, sharing of results, medical imaging, regulatory solutions, and health information exchanges. 

The symposium will begin Tuesday, September 20 with a reception at 5:30 p.m. followed by a public lecture from keynote Keith Yamamoto, Ph.D., special advisor to the chancellor for science policy and strategy at the University of California, San Francisco, and president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As chair of the National Academy of Science Board on Life Sciences, Yamamoto created the study committee that produced the landmark white paper, Toward Precision Medicine: Building a Knowledge Network for Biomedical Research and a New Taxonomy of Disease, the report that outlined the original precision medicine concept. Yamamoto will discuss how artificial intelligence in cancer research and clinical care can turn promise into reality. 

To learn more and to register for the event, please visit the symposium website.