Dr. Xiling Shen is the CPRIT Professor in the Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology Department of MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is also the chief scientific officer of the Terasaki Institute, responsible for executing its scientific missions. Previously, he was the Hawkins Family Associate Professor and director of the Woo Center for Big Data and Precision Health at Duke University. He received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees from Stanford University and the NSF junior faculty career award at Cornell University. He was the steering committee chair of the NCI Patient-Derived Model of Cancer Consortium, chair of the NCI Tissue Engineering Consortium 2021 conference, and cancer track chair of BMES 2019. He was the Scientific Founder and CEO of Xilis, Inc, a precision oncology company that raised $89M Series-A financing and voted among Business Insiders’ top 16 life science startup in 2023. His lab studies precision medicine from a systems biology perspective. Areas of interests include cancer, stem cells, the gut-brain axis, and intravital imaging.