Clemens Grassberger, PhD
Associate Professor
Radiation Oncology Division, Fred Hutch
Dr. Clemens Grassberger focuses on mathematical modeling of cancer and its response to treatment, particularly the immune response to radiotherapy and how to optimize radiation-drug combination regimens. His work combines new methodologies in machine learning with mechanistic modeling based on underlying biological mechanisms to understand how cancer responds to different treatment approaches. The goal is to leverage the domain knowledge in cancer to learn from the limited data available in pilot clinical cohorts and suggest strategies to explore in future clinical trials.
In 2021, Dr. Grassberger received the John S. Laughlin Early-Career Scientist Award from the American Association of Physicists in Medicine. His work describing the first framework to calculate dose to circulating lymphocytes won the 2022 Roberts Prize for best paper published in Physics in Medicine and Biology. His lab is funded by the National Institutes of Health and several foundations.
Education
PhD, Physics, ETH Zurich, 2014
MS, Physics, ETH Zurich and Ecole Normale Superieure, 2010
Other Appointments & Affiliations
Associate Professor, Division of Radiation Oncology, University of Washington School of MedicineAssociate Professor, Division of Radiation Oncology
University of Washington School of Medicine
Current Projects
Radiation-Induced Lymphopenia: Understanding, Predictive Modeling and Developing Photon and Proton-Based Mitigation Strategies — investigating how different types of radiotherapy affect the immune response and how we can minimize the immuno-suppressive effects of radiotherapy. (P01CA261669, PI: Hong) led by Massachusetts General Hospital and MD Anderson Cancer Center (25% effort)
Develop the required methodologies to accurately calculate the dose to circulating lymphocytes during external beam radiation therapy (R21CA248118, PI: Grassberger)