Karla V. Ballman, Ph.D.

My research interests are related to surgical oncology; specifically, the methodology of surgically based clinical trials and the analysis of high-dimensional data arising from biospecimens collected as part of a surgically based clinical trial.

Active areas of research include clinical trial design; the development of predictors based on high-dimensional data (e.g. gene expression, SNPs, proteomics); and the design of predictor validation studies. I am involved in multiple on-going clinical trials of surgically based treatment of thoracic cancers (e.g., lung and esophageal) and associated correlative studies using biospecimens obtained from patients participating in clinical trials.

In addition, I support studies in prostate cancer and neuro-oncology that involve high-dimensional data.