Monica Bertagnolli - Episode 83

Monica Bertagnolli - Episode 83

From ACM ByteCast by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

March 31, 2026 · 57 min · Episode 83

About this episode

Monica Bertagnolli discusses her journey in cancer surgery and national leadership, emphasizing collaboration and AI in healthcare.

In this episode, part of a special collaboration between ACM ByteCast and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)’s For Your Informatics podcast, Sabrina Hsueh and Li Zhou host Monica Bertagnolli, a surgical oncologist, physician-scientist, and President Elect of the National Academy of Medicine—the first woman to hold that position in NAM’s history. She previously served as the 17th Director of the National Institutes of Health and the 16th Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), as well as President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. In the past, she was the Richard E. Wilson Professor of Surgery in surgical oncology at Harvard Medical School, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.In the interview, Dr. Bertagnolli shares her unique journey from Princeton engineering to cancer surgery and national leadership. She emphasizes collaboration, system thinking, and bringing an engineering mindset of “pilot, test, scale, and continuously improve” to AI in healthcare. She highlights her role in founding mCODE, an initiative to improve patient…

People in this episode

Hosts: Sabrina Hsueh, Li Zhou

Guest: Monica Bertagnolli

Topics covered

  • healthcare
  • AI in medicine
  • oncology
  • leadership
  • data interoperability
  • trust in science

Keywords

  • cancer surgery
  • AI
  • healthcare
  • leadership
  • data interoperability
  • trust in science
  • oncology

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: National Academy of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, American Society of Clinical Oncology, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, American Medical Informatics Association, mCODE

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