DBMI postdoc Zhijian Hu, PhD, of Dr. Kathleen Curtius’s Quantitative Cancer Control (QCC) Lab, was recently awarded UC San Diego’s International Services and Engagement Office (ISEO) Transformative Research Postdoctoral Grant. The highly competitive award provides $50,000 to support bold, high-impact research by exceptional postdoctoral scholars from around the world. Dr. Hu earned his PhD in Biophysics and MS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Michigan in 2025. His research focuses on modeling cancer risk dynamics and identifying biomarkers indicative of early-stage cancer onset and recurrence by integrating mathematical modeling and data science approaches. He is particularly interested in leveraging AI and stochastic mechanistic modeling to improve patient-specific cancer risk prediction and inform personalized surveillance strategies, in which this award will help support. We congratulate Dr. Hu on this outstanding achievement and invite you to read more about the grant here.

 In a recent publication, DBMI faculty Kathleen Curtius, PhD, and DBMI predocs Brian Johnson and Hyrum Eddington, co-authored a study that found that artificial intelligence combined with biostatistical risk models can accurately predict which patients with ulcerative colitis and low-grade dysplasia (UC-LGD) are most likely to develop colorectal cancer. Published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the findings may help improve patient counseling, guide clinical decision-making, and support more timely follow-up care. The study was conducted by applying an AI workflow to examine medical records from 55,000 patients in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system to identify UC-LGD patients and assess their individual cancer risk. Dr. Curtius sat down with UC San Diego Today to share more details of the AI workflow and its current impact on patient care. We invite you to read the featured article here and the full publication here. 

DBMI faculty Tiffany Amariuta, PhD, was recently nominated for the AI2050 Early Career Fellowship from the Schmidt Science Foundation. The Schmidt Science Foundation’s AI2050 initiative supports early-career researchers pursuing bold, interdisciplinary work to address critical health and environmental challenges using artificial intelligence. The fellowship is highly competitive and operates through a closed nomination process. Dr. Amariuta was among a select group of junior faculty worldwide invited to submit a proposal on how their research leverages AI to tackle major societal challenges. Her proposal focuses on developing causally interpretable genomic deep learning frameworks to advance personalized molecular trait and disease prediction. While final awards have yet to be announced, we wish Dr. Amariuta best of luck! Read more about the AI2050 Initiative here. 

DBMI faculty Tiffany Amariuta, PhD, and her lab were recently awarded 6,600 GPU-hours through the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot Program. The program is funded by the National Science Foundation and provides access to high-performance computing resources for AI research. Dr. Amariuta lab was awarded the allocation based on one of their current project “Scalable Diploid Sequence-to-Expression Modeling for Interpretable Genomic AI”. This project aims to advance gene expression prediction by fully capturing the effects of genetic variation. While existing deep sequence-to-function models rely on a single copy of an individual’s DNA, this project incorporates diploid genetic variation to better represent complex, nonlinear regulatory effects. This approach aims to improve the accuracy of personalized gene expression prediction, which is an important task for disease biomarker discovery. Learn more about this project and other through Dr. Amariuta’s lab here. 

Nancy Herbst celebrated her 13-year UCSD work anniversary on April 1st.   

We invite you to help us celebrate our most recent DBMI birthdays! Happy Birthday to the following DBMI’ers!

Mathi Ganapathi - April 14th

Kai Post - February 12th

Tracy Layton - February 27th

DBMI predoc, Wilfredo Gonzalez-Rivera, was selected to present his recent research Admixture mapping identifies complex traits associations using local ancestry in the All of Us Research Program at UCLA’s Emerging Genomic Scientist 2026 Symposium. The annual symposium allows senior predoctoral and junior postdoctoral applicants to present cutting edge research in genetics and genomics. In addition to presenting their research at the symposium, the speakers have the opportunity to form short- or long-term mentorship and collaboration relationships with UCLA researchers. Read more about the event here. 

Did you know that you can give recognition to another UCSD Health employee using the MyPerformance system? Go into MyPerformance (Blink > Personal > UCLearning > MyPerformance > Continuous Feedback > Provide Recognition) to give them a shout-out. The staff member will receive notice of the positive recognition, and their supervisor will be cc’ed. If you received fantastic service from someone in IT, HR, housekeeping, or a colleague, don’t hesitate to use the system to thank them.

Did you know that DBMI has a virtual suggestion box where you can provide anonymous feedback? You can access that here. You can also access the virtual suggestion box on the DBMI website – scroll to the bottom of the homepage and click on the feedback link.

Ayyash M, Aviram A, Krenitsky N, Wen T, Berghella V. Preserving the human touch in an era of artificial intelligence. Am J Obstet Gynecol MFM. 2026 May;8(5):101916. doi: 10.1016/j.ajogmf.2026.101916. PMID: 42091288      No abstract available.

Adiyeke E, Liu T, Dheeraj Naganaboin VS, Li H, Loftus TJ, Ren Y, Shickel B, Ruppert MM, Singh K, Fang R, Rashidi P, Bihorac A, Ozrazgat-Baslanti T. Reinforcement Learning for Intraoperative Hypotension Management with Consideration to Postoperative Acute Kidney Injury. Kidney360. 2026 May 5. doi: 10.34067/KID.0000001212. Online ahead of print. PMID: 42084911     

Silver E, Taub A, Bui V, Ruf G, Johnson C, Bloss C, Rabin B, Urey M, Greenberg B, Adler ED, Hong KN, Bui QM. Patient Perspectives on Cardiac Gene Therapy: A Survey of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Educational Needs. J Card Fail. 2026 May 2:S1071-9164(26)00216-2. doi: 10.1016/j.cardfail.2026.04.004. Online ahead of print. PMID: 42082075      No abstract available.

Mamandipoor B, Shen I, Hsu CN, Gabriel RA. Engineering biomarker representations of vital signs data enhances deep learning mortality prediction. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2026 May 2:ocag066. doi: 10.1093/jamia/ocag066. Online ahead of print. PMID: 42068567  

Darbouze M, Wen T, Huang Y, Friedman AM. Risk Factors, Trends, and Outcomes Associated with Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa Diagnoses during Delivery Hospitalizations. Am J Perinatol. 2026 May 1. doi: 10.1055/a-2866-9727. Online ahead of print. PMID: 42066791    

Burton BN, Canales C, Chang E, Du A, Sebastian C, Gabriel RA. Applying Large Language Models in Perioperative Medicine With an Equity-Informed Perspective. Anesth Analg. 2026 Apr 29. doi: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000008017. Online ahead of print. PMID: 42066017      No abstract available.

McGrail C, Sears TJ, Griffin EN, Ghaben AL, Smadbeck P, Flannick J, Kudtarkar P, Carter H, Gaulton K. Genetic association and machine learning improve the prediction of type 1 diabetes risk. Nat Genet. 2026 Apr 30. doi: 10.1038/s41588-026-02578-y. Online ahead of print. PMID: 42062540  

Kalahasti NV, Donepudi G, Bauersfeld S, Jandu S, Tayal A, John DJ, Kacham S, Muruhathasan V, Ramsey C, Jang SS, Flagg M, Hogarth M, Califano J, Fisch KM. Clinicogenomic Real-World Data Enable Prediction of Hospital Readmissions at a Comprehensive Cancer Center. JCO Clin Cancer Inform. 2026 Apr;10(2):e2500172. doi: 10.1200/CCI-25-00172. Epub 2026 Apr 27. PMID: 42044461  

Cao J, Balczewski E, Ladhania R, Dhillon P, Likosky DS, Janda AM; MPOG Collaborators; Kheterpal S, Mathis MR, Singh K. Exploring the limits of localization: federated model stacking improves hospital-level prediction in a national research network. NPJ Digit Med. 2026 Apr 24. doi: 10.1038/s41746-026-02634-1. Online ahead of print. PMID: 42032114   

Amara D, Grieco A, Covarrubias K, Liu Y, Stock PG, Foley D, Greenstein S, Hirose R, Parekh JR. Comparison of Laparoscopic and Hand-assisted Live Donor Nephrectomy: An Analysis of NSQIP Transplant. Transplant Direct. 2026 Apr 17;12(5):e1946. doi: 10.1097/TXD.0000000000001946. eCollection 2026 May. PMID: 42017069      Free PMC article. 

Meineke MN, Chien A, Mawdsley SW, Meyer M, Park BH, Kim E, Gabriel RA. The Anesthesia Preparedeness Clinic (APC) triage score tool: an integrated electronic health record tool for improving resource allocation for preoperative care clinics. J Clin Monit Comput. 2026 Apr 16. doi: 10.1007/s10877-026-01438-8. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41989525

Zhang L, Guo H, Schaffer L, Ko YS, Singh D, Rahmani H, Grotjahn D, Villa E, Gilson M, Wang W, Ideker T, Xing E, Xie P. A tri-modal contrastive learning framework for protein representation learning. Cell Rep Methods. 2026 Apr 15:101407. doi: 10.1016/j.crmeth.2026.101407. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41990738    

Lopez NE, Neel NC. Can Artificial Intelligence Be Used to Predict Response in Rectal Cancer? Current Evidence and Future Possibilities. Clin Colon Rectal Surg. 2026 Feb 11;39(3):200-208. doi: 10.1055/a-2769-1185. eCollection 2026 May.PMID: 41948162      Review.    

Miller MA, Lu X, Pearce A, Malhotra A, Nemati S. Physician Gestalt Compared With Artificial Intelligence Model to Predict Intubation in Critically Ill Patients. Crit Care Explor. 2026 Apr 2;8(4):e1393. doi: 10.1097/CCE.0000000000001393. eCollection 2026 Apr 1. PMID: 41926168  

Rotenstein LS, Holmgren AJ, Thombley R, Sriram A, Dbouk RH, Jost M, Aizenberg D, MacDonald S, Kanaparthy N, Williams B, Hsiao A, Schwamm L, Murray S, Byron M, You JG, Centi AJ, Iannaccone C, Frits M, Landman AB, Singh K, Tai-Seale M, Cao J, Lawrence K, Mann D, Holland C, Blanchette B, Ehrenfeld J, Melnick ER, Bates DW, Adler-Milstein J, Mishuris RG. Changes in Clinician Time Expenditure and Visit Quantity With Adoption of Artificial Intelligence-Powered Scribes: A Multisite Study. JAMA. 2026 Apr 1:e262253. doi: 10.1001/jama.2026.2253. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41920565  

Swiecicki PL, Othus M, Patel SP, Kwang-Chae Y, Kurzrock R. Baseline tumor burden and outcomes in patients with rare cancers treated with immunotherapy (Southwest Oncology Group trial S1609). Cancer. 2026 Apr 1;132(7):e70374. doi: 10.1002/cncr.70374. PMID: 41892875      Free PMC article.      Clinical Trial.  

Gabriel RA, Curran BP, Said ET, Tsuda PS, Bongbong DN, Deconde AS, Yan CH, Ingrande J. Neostigmine versus sugammadex on outpatient recovery among obese patients with obstructive sleep apnea: A randomized controlled trial. Sci Rep. 2026 Mar 31. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-47043-2. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41917453      No abstract available.

Khullar D, Casalino LP, Kronick RG, Petersen LE, Tai-Seale M, Wen J, Zhang M, Bond AM. Turnover and Burnout Among Family Physicians. JAMA Intern Med. 2026 Mar 30:e260271. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2026.0271. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41910962    

Hecht JR, Molina JR, Liechty K, Welling TH, Grierson PM, Patel SP, Kirtane K, Morelli MP, Locke FL, Maloney DG, Punekar SR, Nikiforow S, Lin Y, Ulrickson M, Specht JM, Lozac'hmeur A, Osterman CK, Garde RJ, Rangel GA, Ng EW, Welch JS, Tebbets JC, Go WY, Simeone DM. BASECAMP-1 screening study: a model for efficient enrolment in precision oncology clinical trials.BMJ Oncol. 2026 Mar 27;5(1):e001033. doi: 10.1136/bmjonc-2025-001033. eCollection 2026. PMID: 41918932      Free PMC article.  

Chae YK, Czeskleba J, Patel SP, Mentor A, Robinson W, Jones NL, Rampurwala M, Naing A, Beck JM, Moloney-Lineen C, Chung LI, McLeod CM, Chen HX, Sharon E, Threlkel S, Othus M, Ryan CW, Blanke CD, Kurzrock R. A phase II basket trial of Dual Anti-CTLA-4 and Anti-PD-1 Blockade in Rare Tumors (DART) SWOG S1609: vaginal cancer sub cohort results. J Gynecol Oncol. 2026 Mar 25. doi: 10.3802/jgo.2026.37.e92. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41995270   

Moore MB, Okamuro K, Bresee C, Eskander R, Gin GT, Grisales T, Galvez A, Gregory K, Koola J, Lukacz ES, Mays AM, Nuckols TK, Pangelina C, Pevnick J, Reuben DB, Singer J, Tai-Seale M, Wang A, Wenger N, Wu S, Yazdany T, Zhu X, Anger JT; INTUIT-PC Research Group. Optimizing Primary Care Tools for Incontinence MAnagement (OPTIMA): protocol for a cluster randomized controlled trial. Trials. 2026 Mar 25. doi: 10.1186/s13063-026-09427-7. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41882689

Curtius K. Predicting Cancer in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Starts With Good Notes. Gastro Hep Adv. 2026 Mar 24;5(6):100936. doi: 10.1016/j.gastha.2026.100936. eCollection 2026. PMID: 42022528      Free PMC article.      No abstract available.

Bartell E, Lin K, Tsuo K, Gan W, Vedantam S, Cole JB, Baronas JM, Yengo L, Marouli E, Amariuta T, Chen Z, Li L; GIANT consortium; China Kadoorie Biobank Collaborative Group; Renthal NE, Jacobsen CM, Salem RM, Walters RG, Hirschhorn JN. Genetics of skeletal proportions across two different populations. Am J Hum Genet. 2026 Mar 19:S0002-9297(26)00079-0. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2026.02.015. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41861830  

Tavakoli K, Huang BB, Mirmira T, Ma N, Weinreb RN, Baxter SL. Multi-ancestry genome-wide association study in all of Us for primary open-angle glaucoma. Sci Rep. 2026 Mar 17. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-43993-9. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41844886      No abstract available.

McDermott JE, Bromberg Y, Carter H, Wheeler T. Session Introduction: Biological molecular function: methods and benchmarks for finding function in biological dark matter. Pac Symp Biocomput. 2026;31:417-424. doi: 10.1142/9789819824755_0029.PMID: 41758157  

Chae YK, Othus M, Lyu J, Lee S, Paik S, Dietrich E, Jung CM, Chung LI, Patel S, Kurzrock R. Evaluation of mixed response in tumor size and survival in patients with rare cancers treated with dual checkpoint inhibitor therapy (DART SWOG S1609). J Immunother Cancer. 2026 Mar 11;14(3):e013260. doi: 10.1136/jitc-2025-013260. PMID: 41819545     

Mortazavi M, Guevara J, Diaz J, Tran S, Ziaei Jam H, Reeves C, Batalov S, Jepsen K, Bainbridge M, Besterman AD, Gymrek M, Palmer AA, Sebat J. Long-read genome sequencing improves detection and functional interpretation of structural and repeat variants in autism. Cell Genom. 2026 Mar 9:101186. doi: 10.1016/j.xgen.2026.101186. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41806827   

Havens JL, Kosakovsky Pond SL, Zehr JD, Pekar JE, Parker E, Worobey M, Andersen KG, Wertheim JO. Dynamics of natural selection preceding human viral epidemics and pandemics. Cell. 2026 Mar 6:S0092-8674(26)00171-6. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2026.02.006. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41794027 

Ozturk K, Klie A, Carter H. Precision Oncology: Multimodal and Multiscale Methods to Promote Mechanistic Understanding. Annu Rev Biomed Data Sci. 2026 Mar 6. doi: 10.1146/annurev-biodatasci-092724-043507. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41791410      Review. 

Do VM, Gabriel RA. In Response. Anesth Analg. 2026 Mar 2. doi: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000007987. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41771157      No abstract available.

Hallaj S, Boland MV, Halfpenny W, Myers JS, Weinreb RN, Zangwill LM, Baxter SL. PyOPV: An Open-Source Python Package for Ophthalmic Visual Field Data Management. J Glaucoma. 2026 Mar 1;35(3):150-156. doi: 10.1097/IJG.0000000000002654. Epub 2026 Feb 17. PMID: 41746848 

McDermott JE, Bromberg Y, Carter H, Wheeler T. Session Introduction: Biological molecular function: methods and benchmarks for finding function in biological dark matter. Pac Symp Biocomput. 2026;31:417-424. doi: 10.1142/9789819824755_0029. PMID: 41758157     

Hallaj S, Boland MV, Halfpenny W, Myers JS, Weinreb RN, Zangwill LM, Baxter SL. PyOPV: An Open-Source Python Package for Ophthalmic Visual Field Data Management. J Glaucoma. 2026 Mar 1;35(3):150-156. doi: 10.1097/IJG.0000000000002654. Epub 2026 Feb 17.PMID: 41746848  

Rothman JM, Kwan B, Longhurst CA, Jena AB. US Newborn Hepatitis B Virus Vaccination Rates. JAMA. 2026 Feb 23:e260866. doi: 10.1001/jama.2026.0866. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41729512   

Azzam DB, Meller L, Aucoin A, Sharma A, Baxter SL, Vagefi MR. Social Determinants of Health Associated with Orbital and Facial Fractures in the United States using NIH All of Us Research Program. Ophthalmology. 2026 Feb 17:S0161-6420(26)00114-4. doi: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2026.02.017. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41713510 

Johnson B, Eddington H, Kabir M, Gupta S, Shah SC, Curtius K. Automated phenotyping with AI predicts future advanced neoplasia risk in colitis-associated low-grade dysplasia. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2026 Feb 17:S1542-3565(26)00066-2. doi: 10.1016/j.cgh.2026.01.037. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41713829      No abstract available.

Karnaze MM, Bloss CS. Six reasons to study emotional support from conversational artificial intelligence. Nat Hum Behav. 2026 Feb 13. doi: 10.1038/s41562-026-02412-9. Online ahead of print.PMID: 41688600      No abstract available.

Li H, He X, Subbaswamy A, Vossler P, Gossmann A, Singh K, Feng J. Scaling medical device regulatory science using large language models. NPJ Digit Med. 2026 Feb 5. doi: 10.1038/s41746-026-02353-7. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41644679  

Bai D, Mo S, Zhang R, Luo Y, Gao J, Yang JP, Wu Q, Rahmani H, Amariuta T, Grotjahn D, Zhong S, Lewis N, Wang W, Ideker T, Xie P, Xing E. scLong: a billion-parameter foundation model for capturing long-range gene context in single-cell transcriptomics. Nat Commun. 2026 Feb 5. doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-69102-y. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41639087 

Wong A, Currey D, Schwinne M, Park-Egan B, Meyer S, Gutting A, Cao J, Khan S, Dantes R, Pan T, Buchman T, Singh K, Bhavani SV, Lyons PG, Sjoding MW, Tarabichi Y. Multicenter Prospective Validation of an Updated Proprietary Sepsis Prediction Model. JAMA Netw Open. 2026 Feb 2;9(2):e260181. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.0181.PMID: 41758510      Free PMC article.    

Wong A, Currey D, Schwinne M, Park-Egan B, Meyer S, Gutting A, Cao J, Khan S, Dantes R, Pan T, Buchman T, Singh K, Bhavani SV, Lyons PG, Sjoding MW, Tarabichi Y. Multicenter Prospective Validation of an Updated Proprietary Sepsis Prediction Model. JAMA Netw Open. 2026 Feb 2;9(2):e260181. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.0181.PMID: 41758510      Free PMC article.

Yu Y, Diaz J, Kuo TT, Mo A, Pope Z, Hwang HS, Sitapati AM. Application of a machine learning model to predict the estimated primary care patient time consumption. Npj Health Syst. 2026;3(1):12. doi: 10.1038/s44401-025-00061-0. Epub 2026 Feb 2. PMID: 41640509      Free PMC article. 

Le J, Le HN, Nguyen G, Kim R, Avedissian SN, Vo C, Le BH, Nguyen TH, Nguyen DT, Do DH, Le B, Nguyen AP, Tran T, Phung CK, Vu DAM, Singh K, Sitapati AM. Model-Informed Precision Dosing: Conceptual Framework for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Integrating Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Within Population Health Informatics. J Pers Med. 2026 Jan 31;16(2):76. doi: 10.3390/jpm16020076. PMID: 41745369      Free PMC article.      Review. 

Ford JS, Boussina A, Malhotra A, Wardi G, Nemati S. Dynamic sepsis endotypes: instability or expected signal of biological progression? Intensive Care Med. 2026 Jan 26. doi: 10.1007/s00134-026-08309-5. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41586884      No abstract available.

Lee KH, Sears TJ, Zanetti M, Carter H. NeoPrecis: enhancing immunotherapy response prediction through integration of qualified immunogenicity and clonality-aware neoantigen landscapes. Nat Commun. 2026 Jan 23. doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-68651-6. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41577704     

Krause M, Mehdipour S, Tran K, Tran M, Lemkuil B, Pearn M, Fejleh A, Filipovic M, Srejic U, Schwartz M, Friedman R, Gabriel RA. Aprepitant and Postoperative Nausea and Vomiting in Patients Undergoing Acoustic Neuroma Surgery: A Retrospective Database Analysis. J Neurosurg Anesthesiol. 2026 Jan 23. doi: 10.1097/ANA.0000000000001093. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41568453 

Sears T, Kurzrock R, Zhang T, Dong J, Spellman SR, Goodman AM, Bolon YT, Chen Z, Auer P, Saber W, Carter H. Autoimmune HLA alleles and neoantigens predict myelodysplastic syndrome outcomes after allogeneic HSCT: A CIBMTR analysis.  iScience. 2025 Dec 18;29(1):114326. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.114326. eCollection 2026 Jan 16. PMID: 41550735      Free PMC article. 

Chou L, Cho ST, Lee J, Laub D, Meyer D, Carter H, Carvunis AR. Emergence and tandem repeat-mediated elongation of a translated de novo open reading frame in human oncogenic RNA gene VPS9D1-AS1 (MYU). Genome Biol Evol. 2026 Jan 13:evag005. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evag005. Online ahead of print. PMID: 41527363

Patel SP, Gainor J, Kao S, Lee SH, Mok T, Shah R, Zhou C, Peters S. Unlocking the potential of immunotherapy for patients with resectable non-small cell lung cancer. Front Oncol. 2026 Jan 12;15:1690367. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1690367. eCollection 2025. PMID: 41602369      Free PMC article.      Review.

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