Cassie Mitchell Honored by Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute

Oct 30, 2017 — Atlanta, GA

Cassie Mitchell, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory, has been named a Winship 80 Honoree.

The Winship 80 recognizes a broad range of people and organizations: scientists who mentor and inspire Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute leaders; philanthropists whose donations make groundbreaking research possible; community leaders who shine a light on the importance of cancer research and care in Georgia; patients and their family members who embody Winship's mission every time they tell their stories, volunteer their time, and offer unbounded compassion to all who face cancer.

Mitchell is a biomedical engineer, a Paralympian, and cancer patient who has touched many lives at Winship and Emory. She was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in the spring of 2016 and laid low by severe side effects from chemotherapy. Mitchell nevertheless qualified for the 2016 USA Paralympic team. Still undergoing treatment, she competed in Rio De Janeiro and came home with a silver medal in the discus throw and a bronze in the club throw.

Her doctor, Winship hematologist Vamsi Kota, supported her throughout. "She has been an inspiration to her entire healthcare team," says Kota. "I've never met anyone with her level of determination."

As an assistant professor in the Coulter Department, Mitchell’s research centers around expediting clinical translation from bench to bedside using data-enabled prediction. Akin to data-based models used to forecast weather, her research integrates disparate, multi-scalar experimental and clinical data sets to dynamically forecast disease.

Mitchell is the principal investigator of the Laboratory for Pathology Dynamics, which uses a combination of computational, analytical, and informatics-based techniques to identify complex disease etiology, predict new therapeutics, and optimize current interventions. Mitchell’s research has predominantly targeted neuropathology, but her research applications in predictive medicine expand across all clinical specialties.

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Emory is celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Winship Cancer Institute. In 1937, Robert Woodruff, the president of Coca-Cola, lost his mother to cancer. He was determined that no one would have to leave the state of Georgia to receive the best cancer treatment. In her honor, he gave a generous gift to Emory University that helped create the Robert Winship Memorial Clinic, named for Woodruff’s maternal grandfather.