Invited talk at Clemson (Thanks Alex Feltus).

Abstract: Few cancer researchers actually know what it’s like to have cancer. The speaker, Bill, knows. He is five years in remission from a rare papillary kidney cancer. Bill will review the current shortcomings of cancer research including detachment from patient needs, slow pace of progress, low return on investment, and a lack of fresh thinking. He will then argue that novel approaches will necessarily come from determined students who are not anchored to old ways of thinking. Finally, he will advocate for a “hackathon” approach to cancer research that Clemson has helped to promote. The talk will conclude with a presentation by Clemson’s Reed Bender, who recently published a work applying a “video game” machine learning application to precision medicine using Bill’s genomic data.  

pdf video