Public Curriculum Vitae
Personal information
Prof. Dr. med. Jakob Nikolas Kather, MSc
Biography summary
Professor Jakob Kather holds dual appointments in medicine and computer science at the Technical University Dresden, Germany, serves as a senior physician in medical oncology at the University Hospital Dresden and holds an additional affiliation with the National Center for Tumor Diseases in Heidelberg. His research is focused on applying artificial intelligence in precision oncology. Prof. Kather’s team is using deep learning techniques to analyze a spectrum of clinical data, including histopathology, radiology images, textual records, and multimodal datasets. Guided by the belief that medical and tech expertise needs to be combined, medical researchers in his team learn computer programming and data analysis, while computer scientists are immersed in cancer biology and oncology. Prof. Kather chairs the “Working group on Artificial Intelligence” at the German Society of Hematology and Oncology (DGHO) and is a member of the pathology task force of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). His work is supported by numerous European and national grants, which enable the team to develop new deep learning methods for medical data analysis techniques and to apply them in precision oncology.
Mission statement
While the amount of routinely available data is massively increasing, we are not using it for clinical decision making. At the same time, there are exponentially increasing abilities of Deep Learning, especially self-supervised models, transformers and generative models. In just a few years, these algorithms have massively pushed the boundary of what was technically feasible to completely new levels. However, as the field of oncology and data science evolve faster and faster, they are becoming increasingly disconnected. Without structured efforts, it is hard to keep up to date in both fields. Hence, my personal mission is to build an interdisciplinary space in which young biologists, physicians and computer scientists collaborate and co-develop ideas and methods for improved clinical decision-making in cancer.
Scientific career
since 2022: Full Professorship (W3) for “Clinical Artificial Intelligence” at the Medical Faculty and the Faculty of Computer Science at the Technical University (TU) Dresden, Germany. Chair at Else Kroener Fresenius Center for Digital Health at TU Dresden and the University Hospital Dresden. Member of the extended board of directors of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Dresden.
since 2021: Visiting Associate Professor in the School of Medicine, Leeds Institute of Medical Research at St James’s, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
since 2020: Additional affiliation as a Researcher at the National Center of Tumor Diseases (NCT), Heidelberg, Germany
2021 – 2022: Junior (Assistant) Professorship (W1 with tenure track to W2) at the Medical Faculty of RWTH University Aachen, Germany
2021: Medical board certification for “Internal Medicine”
2018 - 2021: Junior research group leader and medical trainee (Gastroenterology) at RWTH University Hospital Aachen, Aachen, Germany
2016 - 2018: Postdoctoral researcher and medical trainee (Medical Oncology) at University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
2016: Medical license granted by the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany
2016: Master of Science in Medical Physics with Distinction in Biomedical Optics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
Awards and honors (selection)
2022: Thannhauser Award by the German Society of Gastroenterology (DGVS)
2021: German Award for Cancer Prevention, Young Investigator Category by the Manfred Lautenschläger Foundation and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
2021: Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Award by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
2020: Research Award for Colorectal Cancer Prevention (Stiftung Lebensblicke, Ludwigshafen, Germany)
2020: Research Award of the German Society for Medical Oncology (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Internistische Onkologie, AIO)
2020: Theodor-Frerichs-Award of the German Society for Internal Medicine (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin, DGIM)
Professional societies and academic committee roles (selection)
since 2024: Member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) for the French RHU (recherche hospitalo-universitaire) research project by SCAI (Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence), AI-TRIOMPH: Artificial Intelligence - clinical TRIals Optimization for oncology with Multimodal PatHology.
2024 - 2025: Member of the ESMO Real World Data and Digital Health Working Group (RWDD).
since 2023: Member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of The Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden (London, UK; chair: Prof. Sir David Lane)
since 2023: Member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of Centrum für Integrierte Onkologie (CIO) (Aachen-Bonn-Köln-Düsseldorf, Germany)
since 2023: Member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the Carl Zeiss Foundation (Stuttgart, Germany)
since 2023: Member of the AI task force of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL)
since 2023: Member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) for the French research project “Precision Medicine and Immunotherapy of Sarcoma” (CONDOR, https://condorprogram.com/board/)
since 2023: Member of the Commission for Early Career Researcher Support (Fachausschuss “Med./Wiss. Nachwuchsförderung”), German Cancer Aid (Deutsche Krebshilfe), Bonn, Germany
since 2022: Chairman of the “Working group on Artificial Intelligence”, German Society of Hematology and Oncology (DGHO)
since 2022: Member of the “Pathology Working Group”, American Association of Cancer Research (AACR)
society memberships: American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO, since 2018), European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO, since 2018), American Association for Cancer Research (AACR, since 2023), European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL, since 2019), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Hämatologie und. Medizinische Onkologie (DGHO, since 2022), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gastroenterologie, Verdauungs- und Stoffwechselkrankheiten (DGVS, since 2021), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin e.V. (DGIM, since 2019), Walter-Siegenthaler-Gesellschaft für Fortschritte in der Inneren Medizin (WSG, since 2022).
Editor roles (selection)
since 2024: Deputy Editor, “npj Precision Oncology” (Springer Nature)
since 2023: Associate Editor, “JHEP Reports” (EASL)
since 2023: Associate Editor, “ESMO Real World Data and Digital Oncology” (ESMO)
since 2023: Senior Editor, “Cancer Research Communications” (AACR)
2022 - 2023: Associate Editor, “npj Precision Oncology” (Springer Nature)
2022 - 2023: Associate Editor, “Cancer Research Communications” (AACR)
since 2023: Editorial Board Member, “Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology” (Springer Nature)
since 2020: Editorial Board Member, “Immunoinformatics” (Elsevier)
Peer reviewer activities listed at https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/D-4279-2015
Publications
Full publication list on PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=jakob+kather) and Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=w6-uFdEAAAAJ).