 | Drew Moghanaki, MD, MPH, Principal Investigator Dr. Drew Moghanaki is Professor and Chief of the Thoracic Oncology Service at the UCLA Department of Radiation Oncology and a Staff Physician at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. He is the co-chair of the VALOR phase III randomized trial, which is evaluating the role of stereotactic radiotherapy as an alternative to surgery for operable early-stage lung cancer. He is a member, advisor, and chair of multiple committees for national organizations that include the American Cancer Society, American Society of Radiation Oncology, the GO2 Foundation, and the Lungevity Foundation. He has raised over $50 million in funding for national lung cancer research and implementation projects within the VA that have a focus on early detection and treatment of patients with early-stage disease. This includes the partnership that was developed between the VA and the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program to establish the VA-PALS program. |
 | Claudia Henschke, PhD, MD, Co-Principal Investigator With more than 25 years of clinical and research experience with low-dose CT screening Dr. Henschke has pioneered city, state, national, and international projects implementing lung screening programs, and is very proud to participate in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs implementation of a CT lung screening program. Since Dr. Henschke launched the Early Lung Cancer Action Project (ELCAP) in 1992, she has been working to advance CT screening research with a particular focus on lung cancer. Dr. Henschke has authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications, 2 books, and many scientific presentations, and trained over 80 physician researchers. In 2010, she joined the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as a radiologist and researcher. She received her B.A. and M.S. from Southern Methodist University, Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, and M.D. from Howard University. She completed her residency and fellowship training at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital at Harvard Medical School where she joined the faculty upon completion of her training. She then returned to New York City where she became Professor of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College prior to joining the Department of Radiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. |
 | Rick Avila, MS, Co-Principal Investigator Rick Avila leads the technical development of the VA-PALS LCS package. He has worked directly with I-ELCAP over the past seventeen years to improve lung cancer screening technology including information technology systems and image analysis algorithms. He also brings experience working within the IT environment of the VA as a former Senior Advisor to the VA Chief Information Officer on Open Source. He has been the leader of numerous successful open source healthcare initiatives throughout his career that include helping co-found the Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance (OSEHRA), that was set up by VA in 2011, and serving as the first Director of Open Source Operations at OSEHRA. He has also served as the Computer Aided Detection Project Manager at GE Global Research, and led the Medical Division at Kitware for nearly a decade. Mr. Avila is also highly active providing technical guidance and support to the Radiological Society of America’s Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance (QIBA). |
