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When Nancy Guo started college at Peking University in China, she pursued biochemistry and molecular biology with what she calls a “vague idea” to use computational methods for a more accurate understanding of how the human body works.

Thanks to technological leaps in genome sequencing and data analysis, Guo has been at the forefront of the bioinformatics revolution throughout her career in academia. She joined �������� in fall 2024 as part of the SUNY , which supports the recruitment and retention of faculty who are leaders in their fields with strong track records of research accomplishments.

Since earning her PhD in computer and information science at West Virginia University, Guo has led multidisciplinary research into artificial intelligence through funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and corporate partners. She has received more than $46.3 million in federal grants as principal investigator and project director to develop technology and infrastructure to advance precision medicine, using the latest tools for genome analysis and drug treatment to fight cancer.

Her goal at �������� is to establish a nationally recognized, multidisciplinary AI research institute for precision medicine that taps into the talented faculty, students and staff at the University.

“The idea is personal medicine. It’s not like previously when everybody got the same treatment,” said Guo, a professor in the School of Computing at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science. “Each tumor is different because of certain mutations that only one patient has.”

Watson College Dean Atul Kelkar believes that Guo’s research has the potential to revolutionize cancer treatment and other aspects of healthcare.

“Professor Guo brings a wealth of experience to ��������, and she knows how to bring together various constituencies and funding agencies to produce impressive results,” he said. “We are so glad to have her here, and we look forward to supporting her research goals for years to come.”

Distinguished Service Professor Weiyi Meng, chair of the School of Computing, added: “Professor Guo is a leader and an expert in bioinformatics, computational genomics and AI-based precision medicine. Since joining ��������, she has been actively leading an effort in creating a multidisciplinary AI research institute for precision medicine. We wish her great success at ��������.”

Finding her path

After receiving her bachelor’s degree, Guo continued to pursue the biochemistry PhD program for a year but still wasn’t convinced it was what she really wanted to do.

She took a class in computer science where she and her classmates learned programming for analyzing DNA. Coincidentally, the Human Genome Project was wrapping up its 13-year international endeavor to map out every chromosome to better understand how diseases happen, and that inspired a new direction.

Her first project as a computer science master’s student at West Virginia University involved analyzing electrocardiograms (EKGs) to better predict adverse heart events and provide early detection of heart disease. When her faculty advisor left the school, she had another choice to make: Continue in academia or find a job in the corporate world? She stayed at WVU and dove right into the PhD program.

“If I wanted to make correct predictions about disease, I needed more advanced training in that field,” she said. “That was even before artificial intelligence was a common term. The terminology we used at that time was ‘algorithm development.’”

Guo’s PhD research included two very different topic areas: NASA satellites and breast cancer. The connection? Both used data-analysis principles to make predictions about what could go wrong.

NASA officials asked which parts might fail during satellite testing and launch so engineers could focus their attention on those possible trouble areas. “I developed a new theoretical framework that asked: Without any data, can you make a prediction?” she said. “Previous methodology required some data, so that was a really hard one.”

For the breast cancer investigation, she connected with a healthcare company that released molecular data on patients’ tumors and wanted to predict how patients would respond to treatment. Guo’s algorithm, she said, “worked really well. We beat all the other published results on prediction using the same data.”

Bioinformatics pioneer

After earning her PhD, Guo continued her cancer research as a faculty member at WVU. For her first grant from the National Institutes of Health, she and her collaborators did groundbreaking work into lung cancer prognosis. They developed a new test for predicting the risk of tumor recurrence or metastasis and the clinical benefits of chemotherapy in early-stage lung cancer patients, which looks for gene expression patterns in primary tumors right after surgical removal to make prognosis and recommend the best treatment for individual patients.

“We identified 200 genes we thought were important in lung cancer, and we collected patient tumors from multiple hospitals in the U.S.,” she said. “Then we designed our own microfluidic chip by narrowing it down to seven genes that can predict early-stage patients who may develop tumors that will metastasize and may benefit from chemotherapy.”

From there, Guo has built a career that includes 62 peer-reviewed journal publications with more than 3,800 citations. Her research has led to 14 patents for cancer drugs and molecular diagnostic assays with novel-technology status from the Food and Drug Administration in review.

As the founding director of the Biomedical Informatics Resources Core of West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute from 2009-17, she led statewide informatics initiatives and enhanced multistate collaboration. She also has mentored 48 postdocs, medical doctors and graduate students to strive as next-generation researchers, tenured faculty, entrepreneurs and healthcare professionals.

Guo knows that breakthroughs developed in university labs need infrastructure to get to patients, so she fosters partnerships between academia and industry for AI-based cancer treatment selection and drug development.

encourages development of market-oriented prototypes and a multidisciplinary graduate training program in West Virginia and the Appalachian region.

Accelerating those products to market can save lives, she said: “In 10 years, genome sequencing has gone from costing $1 million to insurance covering it so doctors know the mutations and can match the appropriate treatment to the patient. It’s so cheap now because of the technology developed in recent years.”

The future at ��������

As healthcare technology accelerates in the next decade, Guo believes that generative AI and similar time-savers — providing they use reliable algorithms — will fuel many of those innovations. For instance, AI helps researchers sort through articles published in scientific journals to find the ones most relevant, or it gives wider access to key skills that may require a time commitment to master.

“It’s a new era,” she said. “Everybody has to learn how to leverage not only the data, but also the tools. You don’t have to take 10 or 20 years learning things from scratch.”

She is thrilled to join the �������� faculty this fall, because she wants to harness the research synergy she already sees on campus. One major step would be establishing an institute for precision medicine, which she hopes to do in the next few years.

“During the in-person interview, they took me to see all the labs and all the infrastructure here, and I met with a lot of faculty members,” she said. “I thought: Wow, this is a place where I can work with these amazing colleagues so we can leverage the best of different fields to make great things happen.”