03/01/2022
By Michael Young

The Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology program invites you to attend a doctoral dissertation defense by Michael Young titled “Improving the quality of cancer care via computational methods: Applications in radiation therapy and oncogenomics.”

Candidate Name: Michael Young
Defense Date: Monday, March 14, 2022
Time: noon-1 p.m. ET
Location: This will be a virtual defense via Zoom. Those interested in attending should contact Michael_young3@student.uml.edu or the committee advisor Erno_sajo@uml.edu at least 24 hours before the defense to request access to the meeting.

Committee:

  • Erno Sajo, Director of Medical Physics at UMass Lowell (Advisor)
  • David Craft, Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Head of the Optimization and Systems Biology Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Rachel Melamed, Assistant Professor of CHORDS at UMass Lowell
  • James Egan, Professor Emeritus of Physics at UMass Lowell

Brief Abstract: This multi-thematic dissertation contributes to the canon of computational methods in cancer classification and radiation therapy. First, validate the use of multi-criteria optimization treatment planning in volumetric-modulated arc therapy for the complex extremity and body sarcoma sites. Next, I introduce PICS, a classification algorithm that interweaves large-scale gene expression data, hundreds of biological pathways and modules, and various clustering methods to stratify cancer patients by overall survival better.

All interested students and faculty members can attend the online defense via remote access.