Ph.D. Student
Bio: Heidi is a PhD student at MSBMI, has a background in software development and has spent 20 years working in the genomics and oncology fields. She has a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Informatics and splits her time between Dan L Duncan Cancer Comprehensive Center (DLDCCC) at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and the McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics (MSBMI) at UTHealth. At BCM she manages a small team of biomedical informatics analysts who support the clinical and research programs of the DLDCCC and as part of a college-wide informatics core creates new software in clinical and translational research such as the pre-clinical models tool, https://pdxportal.research.bcm.edu/ and https://visual.research.bcm.edu/ which provides biobanking, clinical genomic and data visualization resources. With a vision to improve healthcare outcomes at part of a learning health system for the patients at the DLCCC by enabling data-driven decision-making Heidi returned to school to obtain her PhD under the tutelage of Dr. Liu and Dr. Wang in the Center for TEAM-AI. Within the TEAM-AI framework, Heidi plans to investigate the application of new technologies to the clinical decision-making process to generate new models and algorithms for informing and enhancing the oncologist’s decision-making process including early detection, identification of treatment resistance, and selection of personalized medicine therapies. Heidi’s dissertation project is on the application of AI to predict prostate cancer treatment response using temporal somatic changes in circulating tumor DNA.