Dr. Sam Volchenboum is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Associate Chief Research Informatics Officer for the Biological Sciences Division. He is the Associate Dean of Master’s Education and the Informatics Lead for the Institute for Translational Medicine. He is the Program Director for the Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program.His clinical specialty is pediatric hematology/oncology, caring for kids with cancer and diseases of the blood.
In addition to his clinical practice, he directs the Data for the Common Good, a research group dedicated to liberating and democratizing data. Their largest project, the Pediatric Cancer Data Commons, is the world’s biggest publicly-available repository for data from children with cancer. Until 2019, Dr. Volchenboum directed the Center for Research Informatics, a 40-person group that supports biological research throughout the division. As director of this center, he oversaw high-performance computing, HIPAA-compliant storage and backup, application development to support clinical trials, development and maintenance of the clinical trials management system, the clinical research data warehouse, data analytics and visualization, and bioinformatics, including high-throughput genomic analyses and machine learning.
Dr. Volchenboum has been on the UChicago faculty since 2007, and in 2009 he was named a St. Baldrick's Foundation Scholar. He received his PhD in molecular biology and MD from the Mayo Medical School. He completed his residency at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center before going to Boston for his pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital. He also completed a fellowship in informatics and received his Master’s in biomedical informatics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Targeted Enrollment in Pediatric Oncology Trials: A Vision for Just-in-Time Matching.
Targeted Enrollment in Pediatric Oncology Trials: A Vision for Just-in-Time Matching. JCO Oncol Pract. 2024 Feb 22; OP2300826.
PMID: 38386948
An open-source platform for pediatric cancer data exploration: a report from Data for the Common Good.
An open-source platform for pediatric cancer data exploration: a report from Data for the Common Good. JAMIA Open. 2024 Apr; 7(1):ooae004.
PMID: 38304249
Accelerating pediatric hodgkin lymphoma research: the hodgkin lymphoma data collaboration (NODAL).
Accelerating pediatric hodgkin lymphoma research: the hodgkin lymphoma data collaboration (NODAL). J Natl Cancer Inst. 2024 Jan 25.
PMID: 38273668
Using A Standardized Nomenclature to Semantically Map Oncology-Related Concepts from Common Data Models to a Pediatric Cancer Data Model.
Using A Standardized Nomenclature to Semantically Map Oncology-Related Concepts from Common Data Models to a Pediatric Cancer Data Model. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2023; 2023:874-883.
PMID: 38222364
Sociome Data Commons: A scalable and sustainable platform for investigating the full social context and determinants of health.
Sociome Data Commons: A scalable and sustainable platform for investigating the full social context and determinants of health. J Clin Transl Sci. 2023; 7(1):e255.
PMID: 38229897
Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Risk and Survival for Patients with Neuroblastoma over Two Decades.
Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Risk and Survival for Patients with Neuroblastoma over Two Decades. EJC Paediatr Oncol. 2023 Dec; 2.
PMID: 38213818
Automated Matching of Patients to Clinical Trials: A Patient-Centric Natural Language Processing Approach for Pediatric Leukemia.
Automated Matching of Patients to Clinical Trials: A Patient-Centric Natural Language Processing Approach for Pediatric Leukemia. JCO Clin Cancer Inform. 2023 07; 7:e2300009.
PMID: 37428994
The Childhood Cancer Data Initiative: Using the Power of Data to Learn From and Improve Outcomes for Every Child and Young Adult With Pediatric Cancer.
The Childhood Cancer Data Initiative: Using the Power of Data to Learn From and Improve Outcomes for Every Child and Young Adult With Pediatric Cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2023 08 20; 41(24):4045-4053.
PMID: 37267580
Advancing clinical and translational research in germ cell tumours (GCT): recommendations from the Malignant Germ Cell International Consortium.
Advancing clinical and translational research in germ cell tumours (GCT): recommendations from the Malignant Germ Cell International Consortium. Br J Cancer. 2022 11; 127(9):1577-1583.
PMID: 36229581
Association Between Critical Events in the PICU and Outcomes in Neighboring Patients.
Association Between Critical Events in the PICU and Outcomes in Neighboring Patients. Crit Care Explor. 2022 Oct; 4(10):e0765.
PMID: 36248315