Donna Ankerst

Professor Donna Ankerst holds an Associate Professorship in Biostatistics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), affiliated with the School of Computation, Information and Technology and the Department of Mathematics. She also serves as a Research Professor at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio. Her work spans clinical risk prediction (e.g., prostate cancer risk calculators), deep learning for medical imaging (e.g., 3D mammograms), and climate change impacts on Bavarian forests and health. She has pioneered internationally validated tools like the prostate cancer risk calculator and collaborates with TUM's Rechts der Isar Hospital and School of Life Sciences.

Education: PhD in Statistics (Carnegie Mellon University), postdoctoral training at Harvard University and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Awards include the 2018 TUM PhD Supervisor Award and the 2015 Prostate Cancer Dream Challenge win. She teaches courses on applied regression, statistical computing, and data analysis.

Research focuses on integrating biostatistical methods with clinical and environmental data, including multi-center trials, electronic health records, and climate modeling. Key projects include predictive algorithms for cancer diagnosis and climate-driven health outcomes. Grants managed include collaborations on kidney/pancreas transplantation outcome tools and prostate cancer decision support systems.

Labs/Teams: Part of TUM's Data Science initiatives and interdisciplinary groups like the TUM School of Life Sciences. She chairs the Data Safety Board for the WISDOM breast cancer trial and edits Biometrics reviews.