Julian Hong

Dr. Julian Hong is Associate Professor and Medical Director of Radiation Oncology Informatics in the Department of Radiation Oncology, Division of Clinical Informatics and Digital Transformation (DoC-IT), at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and is affiliated with the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute and the UCSF-UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health. He specializes in treating genitourinary malignancies and is board certified in both radiation oncology and clinical informatics.

Education:

• BS in Biomedical Computation, Stanford University (2008)
• MS in Bioengineering, Stanford University (2009)
• MD, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2014)
• Internship in Internal Medicine, Yale-New Haven Medical Center (2015)
• Residency and Chief Residency in Radiation Oncology, Duke University Medical Center (2019)

Dr. Hong's research lies at the intersection of oncology, artificial intelligence, and clinical informatics. His NIH-funded lab develops and implements computational tools to enable personalized, precision cancer care. Key areas include machine learning for real-world data analysis, natural language processing of clinical notes, and AI-driven interventions to reduce hospitalizations. He led one of the first randomized controlled trials of healthcare machine learning, demonstrating that EHR-based algorithms can reduce emergency visits during radiotherapy.

His recent publications reflect a strong trend in leveraging AI and real-world data to improve cancer care delivery. Themes include predictive modeling of hospitalization using step counts, NLP for clinical abstraction, and large language models in oncology. His work emphasizes not only model development but also implementation science and health equity.

Scientific Awards:

• American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) 2024 Scientific Program Committee Award
• Kaggle March Machine Learning Mania 2022 Bronze Medal
• Radiation Oncology Institute 2021 Publication Award
• Bio-IT World Innovative Practices Award 2021
• AMIA 2021 Distinguished Poster
• NEJM AI Travel Scholarship 2020
• Google Cloud Kaggle NCAA Competition 2018 3rd Place
• Dylan Cappel Memorial Scholarship (2014)
• Herman and Gwendolyn Shapiro Research Award (2012)

Dr. Hong serves as Principal Investigator on multiple funded research projects and mentors UCSF students in research and clinical practice. He is actively involved in national leadership roles, including committees for NRG Oncology, ASCO, ASTRO, and AMIA. His lab, the Hong Lab, is dedicated to transforming cancer care through digital innovation and data science.

Labs and Teams: The Hong Lab at UCSF focuses on developing AI tools for clinical oncology, with active projects in predictive modeling, NLP, and health equity. He collaborates extensively across institutions and disciplines, particularly in the areas of computational health and precision oncology.