“I first fell in love with medical data when I took an elective in medicine during my master’s degree in informatics in Munich. The class was about genetics, proteins, brain waves… My inner nerd loved the complexity of it. During my PhD research under the supervision of radiologist Regina Beets-Tan, I was supposed to study colon cancer, but I came up with something else. I wanted to develop a self-learning system that could help radiologists determine whether the immunotherapy is working. My algorithm analyzes full-body scans of people with metastatic tumors. It can monitor way more factors than people can. One challenge I faced was that tumor growth after immunotherapy isn’t necessarily bad news. It could have gotten infected, and disappear once this infection clears. My results are a promising beginning of such a system. I’m very happy that Regina encouraged me when I wanted to take on this research!” Stefano will defend his thesis on March 22.