We've had some exciting times in the Macklin Math Cancer Lab!
On May 18th, Paul Newton and I received received significant startup funding from the USC James H. Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund to establish the Consortium for Integrative Computational Oncology (CICO). We're grateful for this opportunity to build a new resource for USC and the broader cancer community!
CICO seeks to develop and promote cross-disciplinary, integrative collaborations across the USC (particularly the Viterbi School of Engineering and the Keck School of Medicine) in clinically-oriented cancer modeling. Among our guiding principles:
- Computational modeling of cancer must be driven by clinical needs. Modelers need to work hand-in-hand with clinicians at all steps of the modeling process.
- Computational oncology works at its fullest potential when working with clinical data. This focus:
- drives advances in mathematical model design,
- allows us to evaluate and choose between competing models,
- helps biologists to test, validate, and refine current cancer biology orthodoxy,
- helps clinicians to better interpret their data, and
- is most likely to lead to computational tools that will make an impact in the clinic.
- Integrative computational oncology holds the potential to integrate advances from mathematical modeling, experiments, and clinical data into comprehensive tools that give a better understanding of cancer than any of these individual pieces alone.
- Integrative computational oncology must include student education at its core, to create a true "ecosystem" of clinically-focused modeling students from the undergraduate to postdoctoral level.
