Stephen T. Wong

Stephen T. Wong, PhD

Professor of Computer Science and Bioengineering in Radiology, Academic Institute
John S. Dunn Presidential Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Engineering, Full Member, Research Institute
Associate Director, Shared Resources, Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center
Houston Methodist
Weill Cornell Medical College


stwong@houstonmethodist.org
Biography

Dr. Wong holds the John S. Dunn, Sr. Distinguished Endowed Chair in Biomedical Engineering; he is also a Professor of Radiology, Pathology, Laboratory Medicine, Neurology, and Neurosciences, the Associate Director of Translational Research at Methodist Cancer Center, and Chief of Medical Physics and Chief Research Information Officer at Houston Methodist Hospital. In addition, he serves as the Founding Director of the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Center for BRAIN (Bioinformatics Research and Imaging in the Neurosciences) and Founding Director of the Center for Modeling Cancer Development at Houston Methodist Research Institute. He also holds a dozen of other academic posts across institutions in Texas Medical Center as well as overseas universities and medical schools.

An internationally acclaimed bioengineer and imaging scientist, Dr. Stephen Wong has led teams that developed production automation for first very large scale integration (VLSI) 1MB computer memory chip and the largest online brokerage trading system, and contributed to the first hospital-wide digital radiology image management system in US academic medical centers.

Dr. Wong has more than twenty years of research and management experience in industry and academia, including Hewlett-Packard, AT&T Bell Laboratories, the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, Philips Medical Systems and Royal Philips Electronics, Charles Schwab, University of California - San Francisco/Berkeley, Harvard University and Houston Methodist Hospital. He received his senior executive education from the MIT Sloan School of Management, Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He holds many patents and has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers and four books. He also serves on and chairs NIH study panels, conference program committees, and the editorial boards of twelve scientific journals. As an international authority, he is sought as a speaker on medical imaging, systems biology, healthcare IT, drug development, biophotonics, clinical neuroscience and other related topics.

Description of Research

Dr. Wong's research focuses on understanding health and disease from a systems perspective in order to generate cost-effective strategies and solutions for disease management. His research approaches combine both experimental and high throughput biology with rigorous computational, bioinformatics, biophysics, and imaging methods to achieve a deep understanding of the functions of each component in biological systems and integration of them with multilevel systems analysis. For example, the consequences of genetic variation, cell-cell interactions and environmental factors are included to reflect the circumstances and microenvironments of the disease condition. Current research projects include pathway modeling and high throughput phenotyping approaches for target discovery and drug repurposing in combating neurological disorders and cancer, and for understanding the mechanisms of these diseases. Additional projects include reformulation of small molecule drugs using chemical biology approaches, the development of point-of-care molecular diagnosis and monitoring devices using biophotonics and nanotechnology techniques, and the development of label-free molecular image-guided cancer therapy platforms.

Areas Of Expertise

Systems biology Bioinformatics Biological and medical imaging Drug repositioning Drug combinations Image-guided therapy Translational biophotonics Molecular imaging Diagnosis Mechanisms of cancer Mechanisms of neurological disorders
Education & Training

Postdoctoral Fellowship, Japan Science and Technology Agency
MS, Lehigh University
PhD, Lehigh University
Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation, ICOT, The Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project, MITI, Tokyo
Publications

Prevalence of Delirium After Abdominal Surgery and Association With Ketamine: A Retrospective, Propensity-Matched Cohort Study
Faisal, H, Qamar, F, Hsu, ES, Xu, J, Lai, EC, Wong, ST & Masud, FN 2024, , Critical care explorations, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. E1032. https://doi.org/10.1097/CCE.0000000000001032

CD4+ T cell immunity is dependent on an intrinsic stem-like program
Zou, D, Yin, Z, Yi, SG, Wang, G, Guo, Y, Xiao, X, Li, S, Zhang, X, Gonzalez, NM, Minze, LJ, Wang, L, Wong, STC, Osama Gaber, A, Ghobrial, RM, Li, XC & Chen, W 2024, , Nature immunology, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 66-76. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-023-01682-z

Life-Course Brain Health as a Determinant of Late-Life Mental Health: American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry Expert Panel Recommendations
Eyre, HA, Stirland, LE, Jeste, DV, Reynolds, CF, Berk, M, Ibanez, A, Dawson, WD, Lawlor, B, Leroi, I, Yaffe, K, Gatchel, JR, Karp, JF, Newhouse, P, Rosand, J, Letourneau, N, Bayen, E, Farina, F, Booi, L, Devanand, DP, Mintzer, J, Madigan, S, Jayapurwala, I, Wong, STC, Falcoa, VP, Cummings, JL, Reichman, W, Lock, SL, Bennett, M, Ahuja, R, Steffens, DC, Elkind, MSV & Lavretsky, H 2023, , American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol. 31, no. 12, pp. 1017-1031. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2023.09.013

Detecting Wilson's disease from unstructured connected speech: An embedding-based approach augmented by attention and bi-directional dependency
Wong, ST, Zhang, Z, Li-Zhuang Yang, L-Z, Wang, X, Wang, H & Li, H 2024, , Elsevier Speech Communication, vol. 156, 103011. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2023.103011

Translational strategies and systems biology insights for blood-brain barrier opening and delivery in brain tumors and Alzheimer's disease
Song, G, Plumlee, P, Ahn, JY, Wong, STC & Zhao, H 2023, , Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy, vol. 167, 115450, pp. 115450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2023.115450

A Deep Learning Decision Support Tool to Improve Risk Stratification and Reduce Unnecessary Biopsies in BI-RADS 4 Mammograms
Ezeana, CF, He, T, Patel, TA, Kaklamani, V, Elmi, M, Brigmon, E, Otto, PM, Kist, KA, Speck, H, Wang, L, Ensor, J, Shih, YCT, Kim, B, Pan, IW, Cohen, AL, Kelley, K, Spak, D, Yang, WT, Chang, JC & Wong, STC 2023, , Radiology: Artificial Intelligence, vol. 5, no. 6, e220259, pp. e220259. https://doi.org/10.1148/ryai.220259

Systems and Methods for Whole Brain Net Water Uptake Imaging in Human using Non-Contrast CT (Filed using the same title for potential merging in the PCT filing 18/325,602)
Wong, K, Wong, ST & Volpi, JJ Oct. 10 2023, .

AI-Generated Net Water Uptake Map as Tissue Clock in Visualizing Potentially Reversible Ischemic Stroke on Non-Contrast CT Scans
Ghosh, R, Wong, K, Volpi, JJ, Wong, ST & Hodics, T 2023, .

Generation of Whole Brain Net Water Uptake Map Using Non-contrast Computed Tomography
Wong, K, Hodics, T, Ghosh, R, Volpi, JJ & Wong, ST 2023, , 15th World Stroke Congress, Toronto, Canada, 10/10/23 - 10/12/23.

Artificial Intelligence-Powered Acoustic Analysis System for Dysarthria Severity Assessment
Zhang, Z, Shang, X, Yang, LZ, Ai, W, Wang, J, Wang, H, Wong, STC, Wang, X & Li, H 2023, , Advanced Intelligent Systems, vol. 5, no. 10, 2300097. https://doi.org/10.1002/aisy.202300097

The promise of digital healthcare technologies
Wong, ST, Yeung, AWK, Torkamani, A, Butte, AJ, Glicksberg, BS, Schuller, B, Rodriquez, B, Ting, DSW, Bates, D, Schaden, E, Peng, H, Willschke, H, van der Laak, J, Car, J, Rahimi, K, Celi, LA, Banach, M, Kletecka-Pulker, M, Kimberger, O, Eils, R, Eyre, HA, Shariful Islam, SM, Wong, TY, Gao, W, Brunak, S & Atanasov, AG 2023, , Biotechnology Advances, vol. 11, 1196596, pp. 1196596. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1196596

BBox-Guided Segmentor: Leveraging expert knowledge for accurate stroke lesion segmentation using weakly supervised bounding box prior
Ou, Y, Huang, SX, Wong, KK, Cummock, J, Volpi, J, Wang, JZ & Wong, ST 2023, , Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, vol. 107, 102236, pp. 102236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compmedimag.2023.102236

Interferon-gamma is quintessential for NOS2 and COX2 expression in ER- breast tumors that lead to poor outcome
Cheng, RYS, Ridnour, LA, Wink, AL, Gonzalez, AL, Femino, EL, Rittscher, H, Somasundaram, V, Heinz, WF, Coutinho, L, Rangel, MC, Edmondson, EF, Butcher, D, Kinders, RJ, Li, X, Wong, STC, McVicar, DW, Anderson, SK, Pore, M, Hewitt, SM, Billiar, TR, Glynn, SA, Chang, JC, Lockett, SJ, Ambs, S & Wink, DA 2023, , Cell Death and Disease, vol. 14, no. 5, 319, pp. 319. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41419-023-05834-9

Spatial Transcriptomics Depict Ligand-Receptor Cross-talk Heterogeneity at the Tumor-Stroma Interface in Long-Term Ovarian Cancer Survivors
Ferri-Borgogno, S, Zhu, Y, Sheng, J, Burks, JK, Gomez, JA, Wong, KK, Wong, STC & Mok, SC 2023, , Cancer research, vol. 83, no. 9, pp. 1503-1516. https://doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-22-1821

Exosomal non-coding RNAs as a biomarker to improve early ovarian cancer detection.
Wong, ST, Sheng, J, Mok, S, Cao, Y & Han, C 2023, , AACR Annual Meeting 2023, Orlando, United States, 4/14/23 - 4/19/23. https://doi.org/10.1158/1538-7445.AM2023-3333

Reliability of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Stroke Scale Between Emergency Room and Neurology Physicians for Initial Stroke Severity Scoring
Cummock, JS, Wong, KK, Volpi, JJ & Wong, ST 2023, , Cureus, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. e37595. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.37595

G1 or Bust? “Mother” Knows Best: Stress Activated Kinases in Mother Cells Promotes ERK-mediated Proliferation during G1 of Daughter Cells in BRAF Driven Melanomas
Wong, ST, Yin, Z & Wang, L 2023, , Cancer Systems Biology Consortium (CSBS), Aurora, United States, 3/16/23 - 3/17/23.

Addressing the genetic/nongenetic duality in cancer with systems biology
Kulkarni, P, Wiley, HS, Levine, H, Sauro, H, Anderson, A, Wong, STC, Meyer, AS, Iyengar, P, Corlette, K, Swanson, K, Mohanty, A, Bhattacharya, S, Patel, A, Jain, V & Salgia, R 2023, , Trends in Cancer, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 185-187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trecan.2022.12.004

Bone Metastasis Initiation Is Coupled with Bone Remodeling through Osteogenic Differentiation of NG2+ Cells
Zhang, W, Xu, Z, Hao, X, He, T, Li, J, Shen, Y, Liu, K, Gao, Y, Liu, J, Edwards, DG, Muscarella, AM, Wu, L, Yu, L, Xu, L, Chen, X, Wu, YH, Bado, IL, Ding, Y, Aguirre, S, Wang, H, Gugala, Z, Satcher, RL, Wong, STC & Zhang, XHF 2023, , Cancer Discovery, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 474-495. https://doi.org/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-22-0220

Automated catheter segmentation and tip detection in cerebral angiography with topology-aware geometric deep learning
Ghosh, R, Wong, K, Zhang, YJ, Britz, GW & Wong, STC 2023, , Journal of neurointerventional surgery, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 290-295. https://doi.org/10.1136/jnis-2023-020300