Workshop on Digital Pathology Imaging (DPI) in Cancer Clinical Trials and Research

Hosted by: DCTD’s Cancer Diagnosis Program

March 6-7, 2024

Register for the virtual event.

On this page:

• Workshop Overview
• Agenda
• Speakers

Workshop Overview

Audience: Members of the scientific community, leaders of cancer clinical trials, representatives from NCI biospecimen banks, pathologists, radiologists, IT scientists, and policy advisors.

Focus: Expanding the roles of DPI in translational cancer research, biomarker studies, clinical trials, and pharmaceutical development.

Objectives: Understanding the specific needs for DPI by investigators and biospecimen banks and successfully integrating DPI into cancer clinical trials.

Presentation Topics: Successes and challenges in digital and computational pathology, including hardware and software, image acquisition, validation, storage, data management, intellectual property, and public-private partnerships.

Discussion: Addressing challenges posed by the current lack of standardized approaches for DPI utilization in clinical trials and biobanking and propose potential solutions.

Event Organizers: Dr. Irina Lubensky and Dr. Hala Makhlouf.

Agenda

Time	Title	Presenter
Day 1: March 6, 2024
9:00-9:15 am	Welcome and Workshop Format	Hala Makhlouf
9:15-9:30 am	Workshop Overview	Lyndsay Harris
Session 1: Digital Pathology Imaging (DPI) Landscape: Insights and Lessons Learned		Moderator: Ping Guan
9:30-10:00 am	Precision Oncologic Pathology: The Impact of Disruptive Technologies	George Netto
10:00-10:15 am	Digital Cytology: Applications and Lessons Leaned	Liron Pantanowitz
10:15-10:30 am	Digital Pathology to Enhance the Value of Clinical Trials: The NCI-MATCH Experience	Stanley Hamilton
10:30-10:45 am	Digital Image Management: Lessons Learned in Radiology	Kenneth Wang
10:45-11:00 am	The Cancer Imaging Archive: Perspectives and the Path Forward	Lalitha K. Shankar
11:00-11:15 am	Discussion
11:15-11:30 am	Break
Session 2: Exploring Investigators’ Digital Pathology Imaging Needs and the Science of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Driven Research		Moderator: Miguel Ossandon
11:30-11:45 am	High-Quality Data to Drive Future Thinking in AI	Amber Simpson
11:45 am-12:00 pm	Developing Multi-Modal Tissue Imaging Approaches to Guide Personalized Therapy	Sandro Santagata
12:00-12:15 pm	Whole Slide Imaging Biomarkers and Foundation Models	Joel Saltz
12:15-12:30 pm	Real-Time Cancer Pathology Assessment via Artificial Intelligence	Kun-Hsing Yu
12:30-12:45 pm	AI and Digital Pathology: Validation on Completed Clinical Trials	Anant Madabhushi
12:45-1:00 pm	Discussion
1:00-2:00 pm	Lunch
Session 3: NCI Clinical Trials Biobanks Experience with Digital Pathology Imaging: Successes and Challenges		Moderator: Irina Lubensky
2:00-2:15 pm	Challenges and Solutions for Leveraging Digital Pathology in National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN)	Mark Watson
2:15-2:30 pm	The Early Phase and Experimental Therapeutics Trials (EET) Biobank Digital Pathology Experience	Nilsa Ramirez
2:30-2:45 pm	Digital Pathology Insights, Canadian Cancer Trials Group Perspective	Shakeel Virk
2:45-3:00 pm	Collaboration with the NCTN Clinical Trials Statistical Centers to Assess the Impact of Digital Pathology Research	William (Bill) Barlow
3:00-3:15 pm	Discussion
Session 4: Digital Pathology Imaging Standardization, De-identification, and Validation		Moderator: Keyvan Farahani
3:15-3:30 pm	DICOM in Pathology as a Standard	David Clunie
3:30-3:45 pm	Open-Source Tools for WSI Image Deidentification	David Gutman
3:45-4:00 pm	Digital Pathology and AI Validation	Matthew Hanna
4:00-4:15 pm	Discussion
NCI Funding Initiatives for Digital Pathology Imaging Projects
4:15-4:30 pm	Funding Announcements: Challenges and Opportunities for Digital Pathology	Miguel Ossandon
4:30-4:45 pm	Announcements/Day 1 Wrap-Up
4:45 PM	Adjourn
Day 2: March 7, 2024
9:50-10:00 am	Welcome/Announcements
Session 5: Digital Pathology Imaging Hardware and Software: Challenges and Solutions		Moderator: Brian Sorg
10:00-10:15 am	Overview of the Hardware Landscape	George Yousef
10:15-10:30 am	Setting Up Scanning Operations: Costs and Quality Considerations	Orly Ardon
10:30-10:45 am	From Whole-Slide Imaging to No-Slide Imaging	Richard M. Levenson
10:45-11:00 am	In-Line Quality Control for Whole-Slide Imaging	Mark D. Zarella
11:00- 1:15 am	“All In” on a DICOM-Centric Pathology Infrastructure	Steven Hart
11:15-11:30 am	Software Tools to Accelerate AI Development for Digital Pathology	Anne Martel
11:30 -11:45 am	Discussion
11:45 am-12:00 pm	Break
Session 6: Digital Pathology Imaging Data Management and Storage		Moderator: Rodrigo Chuaqui
12:00-12:15 pm	NCI Imaging Data Commons as a Platform for Cancer Pathomics Research	Andrey Fedorov
12:15-2:30 pm	Research Pipelines for Digital Pathology Data at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center	Luke Geneslaw
12:30-12:45 pm	Enterprise Platforms for Image Management and Analysis: Requirements and Solutions	George Zaki
12:45-1:00 pm	Image Data Warehouse Solution for Easy Navigation, Annotation, Analysis and Sharing of Biospecimen Related Research Data	Anil Parwani
1:00-1:15 pm	Discussion
1:15-1:45 pm	Lunch
Session 7: Integrating Digital Pathology Imaging into the Clinical Trial Enterprise: Challenges and Solutions		Moderator: Tracy Lively
1:45-2:00 pm	NCI-MATCH: The First Systematic Attempt to Explore Homogeneity and Heterogeneity of Response in Different Cancer Types When Targeting Common Targets	Keith T. Flaherty
2:00-2:15 pm	Digital Pathology in Pediatric Sarcoma — an Opportunity to Implement Advanced Analytics to Patient Diagnosis and Stratification	Patrick Leavey
2:15-2:30 pm	Strategies and Tools for Developing AI Models into Deployable Clinical Biomarkers	James Dolezal
2:30-2:45 pm	Discussion
Session 8: Exploring the Issues of Digital Pathology Imaging: Intellectual Property and Academia-Industry Partnerships		Moderator: Lokesh Agarwal
2:45-3:00 pm	A Brief Overview of IP Issues Involved in Uses and Sharing of Digital Pathology Images	Lynne Huang
3:00-3:15 pm	Opportunities with Public-Private Partnerships	Stacey Adam
3:15-3:30 pm	Discussion
3:30-3:45 pm	Break
3:45-4:45 pm	Panel Discussion (All Speakers): Addressing the Big Picture, Challenges, Goals	Liron Pantanowitz
4:45 PM	Adjourn

Speakers

Stacey Adam, PhD, is the Associate Vice President at the FNIH, leading many public-private partnerships, such as Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV); the Biomarkers Consortium (Cancer and Metabolic Disorders Steering Committees) and their projects; Accelerating Medicines Partnerships (AMPs)-Common Metabolic Diseases, Heart Failure, and Parkinson’s Disease, Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT); and the Lung Master protocol (Lung-MAP) clinical trial. Prior to FNIH, Dr. Adam was a Manager at Deloitte Consulting in the Federal Life Sciences and Healthcare Strategy practice where she supported many federal and non-profit client projects.

Orly Ardon, PhD, MBA, is the Director of Digital Pathology Operations and an assistant member at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Before joining MSKCC, she led the development of novel computer assisted diagnostic tools and the expansion of digital pathology collaborative initiatives at ARUP Laboratories in Salt Lake City, Utah. Dr. Ardon’s work in digital pathology is centered on operational aspects of the digital technologies and the clinical implementation of laboratory automation. Her interests also include process improvements and healthcare economics. She a Board Member at the Digital Pathology Association (DPA).

William Barlow, PhD, is a Senior Biostatistician at Cancer Research and Biostatistics and a Research Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. He is the primary statistician for all breast cancer clinical trials conducted by SWOG NCTN Group and a statistical representative to the NCTN Group Banking Committee. His primary interests are evaluation of breast cancer screening, breast cancer treatment efficacy, and the predictive effect of markers on cancer treatment. Dr. Barlow has also conducted research on vaccines, backpain, ophthalmology and case-cohort designs.

David Clunie, MBBS, is a radiologist, medical informaticist, DICOM open-source software author, and editor of the DICOM standard. He was formerly the co-chair of the IHE Radiology Technical Committee and industry co-chairman of the DICOM Standards Committee, a chairman of several of the DICOM working groups, including structured reporting, digital x-ray, compression, interchange media, base standard, display, mammography, clinical trials, preclinical small animal imaging, digital pathology, and conformance. He serves as an NCI SME contractor as well as being a sub-contractor to BWH in the NCI Imaging Data Commons (IDC) program.

James Dolezal, MD, is a medical oncologist and computational scientist at the University of Chicago. He specializes in the integration of clinical oncology and digital pathology through AI. His research is centered on the development of deep learning biomarkers for upper aerodigestive malignancies, along with methodological advancements to improve safety and reliability of AI models designed for clinical settings. He spearheads an open-source DPI software initiative that focuses on augmenting the accessibility and reliability of building DPI AI models and is involved in the development of algorithms and software tools that support the conversion of these models into actionable clinical biomarkers.

Andrey Fedorov, PhD, is a researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. He is one of the leads of the team tasked with building National Cancer Institute Imaging Data Commons (IDC). A Ph.D. computer scientist by training, Andrey spent past ~15 years at the BWH Surgical Planning Lab working on translation and evaluation of image computing tools in clinical research applications. He is dedicated to developing infrastructure and best practices to help imaging researchers improve transparency of their studies, simplify data sharing, and make their analyses more easily accessible and reproducible by others.

Keith Flaherty, MD, is the Director of Clinical Research at the MGH Cancer Center, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is the principal investigator of the NCI MATCH trial, the first NCI-sponsored trial assigning patients to targeted therapy independent of tumor type based on DNA sequencing detection of oncogenes. He contributed to the treatment of melanoma by establishing the efficacy of BRAF, MEK and combined BRAF/MEK inhibition in patients with metastatic melanoma. Dr. Flaherty joined the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors in 2018 and AACR Board of Directors in 2019. He serves as editor-in-chief of Clinical Cancer Research.

Luke Geneslaw, MBA, is a Senior Product Manager in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He has developed de-identification pipelines which repurpose digital pathology data for research and educational uses at scale. His recent focus is in building applications and integrating decision support tools fostering adoption of digital and computational pathology in clinical settings.

David Gutman, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at Emory University School of Medicine. His research is focused on developing innovative tools for analyzing large imaging datasets focusing on whole slide images in pathology. He has been instrumental in creating the Digital Slide Archive platform and HistomicsTK, an open-source suite for managing and analyzing large-scale image sets. These tools have been used to investigate aspects of cancer biology research, particularly from TCGA related data sets. He also contributed to developing open-source tools for image de-identification, further enhancing the utility and security of whole slide imaging datasets.

Stanley R. Hamilton, MD, FCAP, is a digestive system and molecular pathologist. He is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology at the City of Hope National Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also the Director of the Clinical Trials Specimen Qualification Laboratory and the Research Pathology Services Shared Resource. His current research interests focus on development and clinical applications of novel biomarkers for precision oncology clinical trials. The clinical laboratories at City of Hope support the conduct of clinical trials through biospecimen qualification, regulatory-compliant laboratory testing, translational research studies, and use of digital pathology.

Matthew G. Hanna, MD, is the Director of Digital Pathology Informatics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He is a pathologist with expertise in breast pathology, informatics, digital & computational pathology. His clinical interests include breast pathology, informatics, digital pathology, image analysis, machine learning, clinical operations/implementation, and decision support tools. Dr Hanna serves as a board member of the Digital Pathology Association and NY Pathological Society. He also actively contributes to the CAP as the Vice Chair of the Artificial Intelligence Committee and member of the Informatics Committees.

Lyndsay Harris, MD, is a medical oncologist who joined the NCI in 2016 after a 30-year career in breast cancer research and translational science. As Associate Director of the Cancer Diagnosis Program (CDP) her role is to support the development of robust prognostic and therapeutic biomarkers. The CDP works closely with the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) to implement biomarkers into several Precision Med,icine trials including the NCI-MATCH (Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice) trial and ComboMATCH. Dr. Harris manages the MDNet assay network to provide molecular assays services on three new Precision Medicine trials: iMATCH, ComboMATCH, and MyeloMATCH.

Steven Hart, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Senior Associate Consultant-AI at Mayo Clinic. He has a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Kansas Medical Center and has spent his career developing and implementing bioinformatics software. He leads much of the data strategy, computational infrastructure, and operational oversight for the Division of Computational Pathology and AI. He is also a co-Chair of the Association for Pathology Informatics’ Technical Standard Committee.

Lynne Huang, PhD, JD, is a Senior Intellectual Property Adviser at the NCI Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD). She takes the lead in reviewing and negotiating a variety of transactional or collaborative agreements for meeting the overall needs of CTEP clinical programs, including Precision Medicine Initiatives, and provides expert guidance and advice as necessary for IP and data protection. Dr. Huang works closely with multiple branches within DCTD, extramural clinical networks/sites, NCI contractors, and NCI pharmaceutical collaborators, to ensure that the terms of any agreements/ contracts reflect current processes of programs and policy requirements.

Patrick Leavey, MD, is a Professor of Pediatrics, and the Associate Vice Chair for Research Operations and Interim Chief of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas Texas. Dr. Leavey led the most recent Children’s Oncology Group (COG) Phase III study for patients with non-metastatic Ewing Sarcoma and is a funded translational investigator navigating the use of advanced analytics and digital imaging to improve treatments for children with bone and soft tissue sarcoma.

Richard Levenson, MD, FCAP, is Professor and Vice Chair for Strategic Technologies, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, UC Davis Health. He received his MD at University of Michigan and pathology training at Washington University, followed by a cancer research fellowship at Univ. of Rochester and faculty positions at Duke and Carnegie Mellon. He then joined Cambridge Research & Instrumentation, Inc., becoming VP of Research before assuming his present position at UC Davis. He helped develop multispectral microscopy and small-animal imaging systems, birefringence microscopy, multiplexed ion-beam imaging (MIBI), and slide-free as well as enhanced-content microscopy approaches, and is an inventor on some 10 patents. He is section editor for Archives of Pathology and is on the editorial board of Lab. Invest. and AJP. Regrettably, he also taught pigeons histopathology and radiology. He is a recipient of the 2018 UC Davis Chancellor’s Innovator of the Year award and is a Fellow of SPIE.

Irina A. Lubensky, MD, is the Chief of Pathology Investigations and Resources Branch (PIRB) at the Cancer Diagnosis Program (CDP), DCTD, NCI. Prior to joining CDP, she served as a Surgical Pathologist and Chief of the Hereditary Cancer Syndrome Unit at the NCI Laboratory of Pathology and as a translational researcher at the Surgical Neurology Branch, NINDS, NIH. As PIRB Chief, she oversees NCI multi-institutional cooperative agreement grants for biospecimen banking to support cancer research including Cooperative Human Tissue Network (CHTN) and NCI Clinical Trials Network Biospecimen Banks (NCTN Banks), as well as the NCI Specimen Resource Locator.

Anant Madabhushi, PhD, is the Robert W Woodruff Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and is on faculty at the Departments of Pathology, Biomedical Informatics, Urology, Radiation Oncology, Radiology and Imaging Sciences, Global Health and Computer and Information Sciences at Emory University. He is also a Research Career Scientist at the Atlanta Veterans Administration Medical Center. He has more than 200 patents in the areas of artificial intelligence, radiomics, medical image analysis, computer-aided diagnosis, and computer vision. He received the 2017 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) award for achievements in computational imaging and digital pathology.

Hala R. Makhlouf, MD, PhD, is a pathologist and Program Director at the Cancer Diagnosis Program (CDP), DCTD, NCI. She manages multi-institutional cooperative agreement grants for NCI Clinical Trials Network Biospecimen Banks (NCTN Banks) and Early-Phase and Experimental Therapeutic Clinical Trials Biospecimen Bank (EET Bank). She collaborated with NCTN Biobanks to create guidelines for DPI within NCTN trials and provides pathology expertise through evaluating and annotating DPI of biopsy and resection specimens for DCTD investigators. Prior to joining CDP, Dr. Makhlouf served as Chief of the Division of Hepatic Pathology and as Acting Chairman of the Gastrointestinal and Hepatic Pathology Department at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Washington DC.

Anne Martel, PhD, is a Professor in Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto, a Senior Scientist and the Tory Family Chair in Oncology at Sunnybrook Research Institute and a Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute. Her research is focused on medical image and digital pathology analysis, particularly on applications of machine learning for segmentation, diagnosis, and prediction/prognosis. Dr Martel is currently a senior editor for the journal Medical Image Analysis and previously served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions in Medical Imaging. In 2006 she co-founded Pathcore (Toronto, ON), a software company developing complete workflow solutions for digital pathology.

George J. Netto, MD, is the Simon Flexner Professor and Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. His research is focused on urologic and molecular diagnostic pathology and has helped characterize the incidence and role of TMPRSS2-ERG fusion and PTEN loss as a prognostic biomarker in prostatic adenocarcinoma. He is credited with the discovery related to the high incidence of TERT gene promoter mutation in muscle-invasive bladder cancer and upper tract urothelial carcinoma. Dr. Netto is an Editor-in-Chief of Modern Pathology and a Standing Editor of the upcoming 6th edition of the World Health Organization (WHO) Blue Book series.

Miguel R. Ossandon, PhD, is a Program Director in the Diagnostic Biomarkers and Technology Branch, at the Cancer Diagnosis Program, DCTD, NCI. He manages the NCI grant portfolio related to computational modeling and machine learning approaches for cancer diagnosis and digital image processing. He has a dual background in clinical laboratory and computer science. Prior to joining CDP, he worked in cancer research at the Lombardi Cancer Center, Georgetown University, where he developed interest in computer science. Miguel received his master’s degree at George Washington University and Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Liron Pantanowitz, MD, PhD, MHA, is the Chair and Professor of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a hematopathologist, cytologist and is also board-certified by the American Board of Pathology in clinical informatics. Dr. Pantanowitz is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pathology Informatics. He is the president of the Digital Pathology Association, president of the American Society of Cytopathology, and a past president and current council member of the Association of Pathology Informatics. He is an expert in the field of pathology informatics and cytopathology. His research interests include digital pathology and artificial intelligence, as well as non-gynecologic cytopathology.

Anil Parwani, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Pathology and the Vice Chair and Director of Anatomic Pathology at the Ohio State University. He is also the Director of Pathology Informatics and the Director of Digital Pathology. His research is focused on diagnostic and prognostic markers in bladder and prostate cancer, and renal cell carcinoma. He has expertise in surgical pathology, viral vaccines and pathology informatics including biobanking, whole slide imaging, digital imaging, telepathology, image analysis, AI, and lab automation. Dr. Parwani is the Editor-in-chief of Diagnostic Pathology and Journal of Pathology Informatics.

Nilsa C. Ramirez, MD, FCAP, is a pathologist and the Director of the Biopathology Center (BPC) at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital and a professor of clinical pathology at the Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH. Her expertise includes biobanking in the context of adult and pediatric cancer clinical trials. At the BPC she oversees the NCTN biobanking efforts of the Children’s Oncology Group, SWOG, and NRG Oncology-Columbus. She is a PI of the Pediatric Division of the Cooperative Human Tissue Network and a PI of the EET Biobank. Dr. Ramirez is a member of the Biorepository Accreditation Program (BAP) Committee at the College of American Pathologists (CAP) and the CAP BAP National Commissioner.

Dr. Joel Saltz is the Cherith Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Stony Brook University, School of Medicine. His research focuses on digital pathology, artificial intelligence, and imaging biomarkers. Dr. Saltz received his MD and Computer Science PhD from the Medical Scientist Training Program at Duke University.

Sandro Santagata, MD, PhD, is a clinician-scientist practicing diagnostic pathology and leading a research team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He focuses on developing and implementing new technologies and computational approaches for multiplexed tissue imaging of cancer resection specimens. These efforts are advancing the understanding of the biological properties and interactions of tumor and immune cells within the tumor microenvironment and identifying spatial biomarkers to improve cancer diagnosis and to tailor individual therapies to improve patient outcomes.

Lalitha K. Shankar, MD, PhD, is the Chief of the Clinical Trials Branch at the Cancer Imaging Program (CIP), DCTD, NCI. Her work involves establishment of and monitoring of clinical trials to evaluate imaging tracers and techniques, which aim to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. She provides imaging expertise for trials of cancer diagnostics and therapeutics sponsored by NCI in the NCTN and NCORP. Prior to joining the NCI, she was a faculty member in the Department of Radiology at Georgetown University and at the Lombardi Cancer Center and worked in the Division of Nuclear Medicine at Washington Hospital Center.

Amber Simpson, PhD, is the Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Computing and Informatics, and Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences and in the School of Computing at Queen’s University. She is an Affiliate of the Vector Institute for AI as well as a Senior Investigator at the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG). Dr. Simpson is the Director of the Centre for Health Innovation, a joint venture with Kingston Health Sciences Centre and Queen’s. She specializes in biomedical data science, focusing on developing novel computational strategies for improving human health.

Shakeel Virk, BS, is a Manager for the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) Tumour Tissue Data Repository (TTDR). He also serves as a Director of Operations for the Queen’s Laboratory for Molecular Pathology (QLMP), Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at Queen’s University. He managed tissue banking activities for over 150 TTDR clinical trials. His lab provides immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, TMA construction, digital pathology, and DNA/RNA isolation services. Shakeel has a strong interest in digital pathology and image analysis and has set up the Queen’s Digital Pathology platform for scanning, sharing, annotating, and analyzing high resolution pathology slide images.

Kenneth C. Wang, MD, PhD, is a staff radiologist and MRI section chief at the Baltimore VA Medical Center, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He completed residency and fellowship training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and a fellowship in imaging informatics at the University of Maryland. He has worked on standards development with RSNA and LOINC, and his research interests include ontologies, interoperability, image segmentation, MR neurography, 3D printing, liver imaging, and shoulder surgery.

Mark Watson, MD, PhD, is the Margaret G. Smith Professor and Vice Chair of Faculty Development in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine. For the past 25 years, he has directed institutional and national biobanking efforts, emphasizing the use of informatics to develop robust solutions for managing complex biorepository operations. He is the Director of the Siteman Cancer Center Biorepository and of the NCI’s Alliance Group Biorepositories and Biospecimen Resource. His own research is focused on the identification and validation of genomic biomarkers to predict and mitigate metastasis in breast and lung cancer patients using spatial profiling, AI-based image analysis, and liquid biopsy analytes.

George Yousef, MD, PhD, is a Program Medical Director of Laboratory Medicine at University Health Network in Toronto, Canada, a Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the University of Toronto, and the Head of Informatics and Digital Resources at the Canadian Association of Pathologists. He is the Vice President of the International Society of Enzymology, the editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Pathology, and author of a book on “Molecular Pathology in Cancer”. His research laboratory is one of the leading laboratories focusing on the cancer biomarkers in renal cell carcinoma and prostate cancer.

Kun-Hsing "Kun" Yu, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. He developed the first fully automated artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to extract thousands of features from whole-slide histopathology images, discovered the molecular mechanisms underpinning the microscopic phenotypes of tumor cells, and successfully identified previously unknown cellular morphologies associated with patient prognosis. His lab integrates cancer patients' multi-omics (genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics) profiles with quantitative histopathology patterns to predict their clinical phenotypes.

George Zaki, PhD, is a director of applied scientific computing with Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR). He supports investigators across the National Cancer Institute in their scientific computing pipeline, data science, machine learning, and accelerated computing workflow development and sharing. George holds a Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from the University of Maryland.

Mark Zarella, PhD, is a scientist focusing on imaging and quantitative approaches in the Division of Computational Pathology and AI at the Mayo Clinic. Since 2012, he was on faculty in pathology, first at Drexel University College of Medicine as the Technical Director of Pathology Informatics, then as the Director of Digital Pathology at Johns Hopkins University. He joined the Mayo Clinic in 2022 where he helps to transition the department to an AI- and digital-enabled practice. Dr. Zarella also serves on the board of directors for the Digital Pathology Association and on the Digital and Computational Pathology Committee for the College of American Pathologists.