Inaugural Lecture: Professor Vasa Curcin

Video recording of the Inaugural Lecture

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Professor Vasa Curcin

Software Engineering and Medical Research: From star-crossed lovers to BFFs

Abstract

From software architectures and system design to data engineering and algorithm development, various software engineering disciplines play critical roles in advancing healthcare innovation. Methods and standards for seamless integration of disparate data sources enable researchers to draw comprehensive insights from complex patient datasets. Various best practices in software coding have led to the drive for reproducible scientific analysis where we can trace the results published in the paper all the way back to the data sets and software used. Software testing and validation have become indispensable in ensuring the safety and efficacy of diagnostic algorithms. The advent of DevOps and agile methodologies has streamlined the development pipeline, accelerating the pace at which groundbreaking solutions reach clinical settings. In this talk, we will look at how this happened, and what the future may hold.

Biography

Born in Pančevo, Serbia, Prof Ćurčin moved to London in 1997 to study BSc computing at King’s, followed by an an MSc at Imperial. Following a brief stint at Deutsche Bank, he came back to Imperial to do a PhD on scientific workflows in the Data Mining group while leading the bioinformatics work at InforSense Ltd. a data analytics spin-out from Imperial, spending the noughties traveling and designing workflow solutions for pharma companies. Realising that the techniques he developed for automating data analytics are highly applicable to large-scale electronic health record data, he moved from bio to medical research challenges. In 2014 he returned to King’s as a lecturer, and soon after became the head of what is now the Digital Health research group. He is currently joint head of King's Department of Population Health Sciences.