Dr. Lynda Chin graduated with an M.D. degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1993 and is a board-certified dermatologist. She conducted her clinical and scientific training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she completed in parallel her residency training in the hospital and postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory. She began her independent career as a private practice dermatologist in New York City, until she joined the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School as an assistant professor in 1998, and rose to the rank of professor in 2009. Dr. Chin was also a senior associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In 2011, Dr. Chin was recruited to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to become the founding Chair of the Department of Genomic Medicine, with a mission to integrate genomics in the practice of medicine, and to bring to bear the power of big data on the cancer problem. She also serves as the Scientific Director of the Institute of Applied Cancer Science, an organization designed to bring together the best attributes of academia and industry in a new construct to rapidly translate cancer genomics knowledge into effective therapeutic endpoints. In 2015, shifting her focus from research and drug development to healthcare transformation, Dr. Chin began her third career as she assumed her current position as the Chief Innovation Officer and Associate Vice Chancellor at the University of Texas System, to launch the Institute for Health Transformation. Dr. Chin is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the Association of American Physicians.
During her 15 plus years of research career, Dr. Chin ran an impactful program spanning the fields of transcription, telomere biology, mouse models of human cancer, cancer genomics, and personalized cancer medicine. Dr. Chin has held leadership roles in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) since its pilot phase, including serving on its executive subcommittee. She conceived and led the establishment of the Disease Working Group, a structure through which disease experts outside of TCGA can interact with genomic and computational scientists in TCGA. She co-led the first marker publication from TCGA (on glioblastoma) and chaired the disease working groups for both GBM and melanoma. Internationally, Dr. Chin has been active in the formation of the International Cancer Genome Consortium, serving as leader of the working group that drafted the policy on “Clinical and Pathological Issues” and is a member of the Scientific Steering Committee.
Throughout her career, Dr. Chin has championed a model of integration, collaboration and cooperation between the research and clinical care enterprises, as well as between public and private sectors. Dr. Chin has been the architect behind a Technology Core, built upon strategic partnerships with industry entities, to build pivotal platforms as the foundation for a connected health system that affords patients anywhere-access to quality healthcare. The anchors of this Core include IBM-Watson to develop virtual expert systems (such as the MD Anderson Oncology Expert Advisor©) to support evidence-based care with cognitive analytics, PwC to establish a Healthcare Information Interchange to facilitate data fluidity and transparency so collaboration, cooperation and coordination along the entire care delivery continuum is possible, and AT&T to develop a dedicated healthcare communication network to support healthcare data and communication in transit with added security and privacy. Leveraging these capabilities, Dr. Chin is convening an ecosystem of technology, service, retail and healthcare industries to tackle the challenges of chronic disease burden in America.