Dr. Rayjean Hung is the Associate Director of Population Health and the Head of the Prosserman Centre for Population Health Research in the Institute. Dr. Hung joined the Institute in December of 2007, most recently from the University of California at Berkeley, where she also held the position of Visiting Researcher at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France. She is a Professor in the Division of Epidemiology, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.
Dr. Hung research focuses on identifying individual molecular profiles related to cancer risk and progression. The overall goal is to reduce cancer death by early detection and improved patient management. Dr. Hung studies etiology and genetic architecture of adult and pediatric tumors and she integrates epidemiological and clinical data with molecular profile for comprehensive risk models in the population. She has been leading several large-scale international studies, including aero-digestive tract cancer, pancreatic cancer and Wilms tumor. Dr. Hung has substantial experience and expertise in analyzing data with high-dimensionality and published several high-impact papers on lung cancer genetics and cross-cancer pleiotropy. She has also led several seminal and highly-cited papers that quantified the risk factors for lung cancer beyond tobacco smoking. In addition, she has several long-standing collaborative projects with the World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health, and has advisory roles for several national and international organizations.
Related to children's health, in addition to Wilms tumor, Dr. Hung has been studying how early life determinants can affect children's health, and has been co-leading the follow-up efforts of Ontario Birth Study-Kids, which is designed to be a research platform for research topics related to developmental origin of health and diseases. Dr. Hung's research program helps to advance knowledge on why specific complex diseases occurs, identify high risk population for targeted screening for early detection and improved prognosis.
