. . . leading the development of Firehose pipeline as co-PI at the Broad Institute. Outside of her laboratory, Dr. Chin held multiple leadership positions in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project in the U.S., including serving on the executive subcommittee and leading the development of Firehose pipeline as co-PI at the Broad Institute. Internationally, Dr. Chin has been active in the International Cancer Genome Consortium since its inception, currently sitting on the ICGC-ARGO Steering Committee and chairing its Phenomics Working Group. In 2011, Dr. Chin created the first Department of Genomic Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center with a mission to accelerate the translation of scientific advances and democratize the best care to patients outside of academic centers with technologies, data and AI analytics. In 2015, foreseeing the need for a new model to harness the potential of real-world health and health-related data, Dr. Chin launched the Institute for Health Transformation as the Chief Innovation Officer for University of Texas System. She designed and developed REDI (Real-world Education, early Detection and Intervention), an infrastructure platform for a connected health data and care delivery ecosystem. Collaborating with public and private entities across industries, engaging local stakeholders in communities from federally qualified health center to churches, Dr. Chin established such an ecosystem in one of the poorest communities of South Texas to demonstrate feasibility of purposeful data sharing across public and private entities and benefits of technology-enabled chronic care for a vulnerable population. A mother of three teenagers, Dr. Chin is an entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded cancer therapeutics, biomarker and AI companies.
Dr. Chin immigrated to the US from China in her teens and was the valedictorian in her high school class. After earning a B.A. degree with magna cum laude from Brown University, Dr. Chin attended Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She conducted her clinical and scientific training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NY, where she completed in parallel her residency training in the hospital and postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory. Dr. Chin began her independent career as a solo practice, board-certified dermatologist in NYC, learning first hand what it means to provide care on the front line; this experience motivated her interest in leveraging technology for democratization of evidence-based care in community settings.
Dr. Chin next went on to pursue a productive academic research career at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she was a professor at Harvard Medical School and a senior associate member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Her research program spanned the fields of transcription, telomere biology, cancer genomics, and personalized cancer medicine. She held multiple leadership roles in the US project, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and was the principal investigator driving development of Firehose, a pipeline designed to make TCGA data not only available but usable to the broader biology and clinical communities. Dr. Chin has been a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), and is actively involved in conceptualizing the next phase of ICGC, ICGC-ARGO (Accelerating Research on Genomic Oncology). For her contribution to the cancer research field, Dr. Chin was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Chin joined MD Anderson Cancer Center from 2011-2015 as the founding chair for the Department of Genomic Medicine. Instead of the traditional research-focused model, Dr. Chin defined the mission of the new department as one to bring to bear on cancer not only the transformative potential of science and genomics, but also of data, technologies and innovative strategies. As chair, she launched the efforts to create the Translational Research Accelerator, a big data platform built to longitudinally integrate research and clinical care data at MD Anderson to accelerate translational research. She also conceptualized and led the development of MD Anderson Oncology Expert Advisor© powered by IBM Watson, to explore how AI analytics can be responsibly deployed to democratize evidence-based care.
Throughout her career, Dr. Chin has championed integration, collaboration and cooperation between the research and clinical care enterprises, as well as between public and private sectors. She was the Scientific Director of the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and subsequently the Institute for Applied Cancer Science at MD Anderson, an organization designed to bring together the best attributes of academia and industry in a new organizational construct to rapidly translate cancer genomics knowledge into effective therapeutic endpoints.
In 2015, Dr. Chin launched the Institute for Health Transformation as the Chief Innovation Officer and Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at the University of Texas System, to re-imagine a new, data-rich and technology-enabled care delivery ecosystem that can more effectively address the rising chronic disease burden. She brought together major industry partners, such as PwC, AT&T, IBM and Walmart, to develop REDI: Real-world Education, early Detection and Intervention, an ecosystem integration platform that connects consumers and patients, traditional healthcare providers and new entrants, with data and analytics, technology and services, to improve chronic disease management. She operationalized this platform in one of the poorest communities of South Texas to show how collaboration and purposeful data sharing can improve diabetes management for a vulnerable population.
Dr. Chin has co-founded biotechnology companies in cancer therapeutics and biomarkers. Most recently, she has launched Apricity Health, with a mission to address not only quality of care but quality of life for patients with technology, data and analytics, initially focusing on cancer immunotherapy.
©2018 Dr. Lynda Chin | DePINHO DESIGN