Tae Hyun Hwang, PhD, a national leader in the use of artificial intelligence to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment, will lead a new “Molecular AI” initiative within the Section of Surgical Sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
He was jointly recruited by the Department of Surgery and the newly established Center for Computational Systems Biology (CCSB) at Vanderbilt University.
“Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming our ability to solve complex biomedical problems,” said Seth Karp, MD, the H. William Scott Jr. Professor of Surgery and chair of the Section of Surgical Sciences.
“Dr. Hwang is uniquely capable of developing approaches that use this technology to personalize the care of surgical patients, with an initial emphasis on oncology and transplantation,” Karp said.
Hwang joins the Vanderbilt faculty as a professor of Surgery. He was recruited from the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, where he built and led the AI in Oncology Research Program. His work focused on leveraging AI and machine learning to advance precision oncology, immuno-oncology and cellular cancer therapy.
Upon his arrival this month, Hwang will, in collaboration with the CCSB, apply AI and other revolutionary technologies, including advanced molecular imaging techniques, to clinical practice. He also will collaborate with the Department of Biomedical Informatics on various projects.
“AI is a hot topic in biomedical research, often applied to tasks like analyzing electronic medical records using large language models,” said CCSB Director Ken Lau, PhD, professor of Cell and Developmental Biology.
“However, there is a critical need to harness AI for analyzing large-scale molecular data to understand the underlying biological processes and diseases at the cellular and molecular levels,” Lau said. “Dr. Hwang’s expertise aligns perfectly with this vision.
“As a leader of a Human Tumor Atlas Network project, a National Cancer Institute consortium that aims to map cancer in 3D, (Hwang’s) work will consolidate Vanderbilt’s current strength for data generation, standardization and interpretation,” he said. “This recruitment places us at the forefront of advancing precision molecular medicine.”
A native of South Korea, Hwang earned a PhD in computer science (machine learning) from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 2011.
Prior to his work at the Mayo Clinic, he led a team of computational scientists in cancer research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and directed machine learning and AI research at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.
Hwang said he was attracted to Vanderbilt because of its long history of innovation. “Vanderbilt,” he said, “has the culture to innovate in AI.”
Hwang and his colleagues have helped pioneer the application of AI and machine learning to holotomography, a laser technique that can generate three-dimensional images of cells and tissues. “We’re trying to understand how (proteins) function within the cell … (and) how cells communicate,” he explained.
The goal is to create subcellular 3D and 4D atlas models that, by tracking cellular dynamics in real time, can predict disease progression and response to therapy, and lead to more effective and personalized treatments.
Through the CCSB, which was established in September 2024, researchers are exploring how disease disrupts complex biological systems, and whether, through computational science and synthetic biology approaches, these systems might be “reverse-engineered” back to health.
In addition to cancer, the Molecular AI initiative will apply the new tools of precision medicine to organ and tissue transplantation. These techniques can be used, for example, to prioritize patients for transplantation and, potentially, to predict and prevent rejection of transplanted organs by the body’s immune system.
“Vanderbilt is one of the best transplant medical centers,” Hwang said. “Why not leverage this?” Using AI to understand what is happening at the molecular level “can bring the best treatment to the patient,” he said.
“One of the many strengths of Vanderbilt is cross-institutional collaboration,” Karp said. “We are so excited to partner with CCSB.”
