Chang-Fu Kuo

As a senior rheumatologist and clinical immunologist, I devote most of my clinical career to the clinical care and consultation for patients with rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and gout. I was trained in Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, the largest private hospital system in Taiwan, and currently visiting staff in the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology, where I served as the division head for 5 years. In addition to routine patient care, I participate in many phase II/II clinical trials of new drugs for rheumatic diseases. Currently, I'm the PI of 5 ongoing clinical trials in CGMH. I have a great passion for doing clinical research. After board certification, I pursue a Master degree in Chang Gung University and a Ph.D. Degree at the University of Nottingham in the UK. Now, I choose to be a physician-scientist and spent 60% of my work time doing clinical research. My research area covers the application of data science to address important clinical or epidemiological questions involving large populations, specifically methodological development in genetic epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology and their application in Rheumatology. As a rheumatologist, I focused on gout and rheumatoid arthritis and reported their epidemiology parameters, treatment, prognosis, comorbidities, genetics and risk factors. I work with my colleagues to address problems in Cardiology, Oncology, and Nephrology. I design and integrate methods from data science, epidemiology, and genetics to investigate complex clinical data. Recently, I started to employ deep learning methods to address clinical and epidemiological problems. Currently, I build up a team with 10 PhDs and 12 masters to attack topics in (1) medical image; (2) electrophysiology; (3) pathology and (4) deep genomics. As the CGMH AI center director, I help the hospital set up the infrastructure of AI development and high-performance computing facility. In addition, I attract external funding and collaboration from international academia and industry to develop clinical AI applications. Now I'm the director of the R&D department in CGMH, aiming to help hospital PIs expand their research arena. In addition, to encourage top research in CGMH, I also make efforts to attract regional and international collaboration from academia and industry and promote the commercialization of research results.