Yesterday marked the much-anticipated start of the AI for Cancer Summer School 2025, hosted in the breathtaking surroundings of Corfu, Greece. The event began with a warm, thoughtful and deeply personal welcome session from the Scientific Committee (our Treasurer Helena Linardou, and prof. Nikolaos Korfiatis). More than just an introduction to the program, the session was an outlook on the importance of connection. As Corfu natives, they shared how meaningful it was to host this event on their home island, a place woven into their own family history, and now part of a new chapter cancer research and AI as the host location for the first specialized Summer School in the topic. In many ways, the summer school represents a return to the roots: a setting full of memory and tradition becoming the backdrop for fresh ideas, new collaborations, and forward-looking science.
In a message that resonates with ESAC’s mission, the opening highlighted the importance of connection – across disciplines, but also between people, backgrounds, and generations of experts – and invited everyone to see this experience as more than just a technical exchange, but a moment to build something lasting.
Following the welcome, our President Arsela Prelaj gave an engaging talk introducing the society and its new role in the AI-cancer research landscape. She presented ESAC as a platform to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, support early-career researchers, and promote best practices in the development and application of AI tools for cancer research and care.
She also gave an overview of ESAC’s organizational structure, including its active working groups and committees, open and community-driven, and she encouraged attendees to explore ways to contribute to ongoing discussions or propose new directions. Finally, she highlighted several upcoming ESAC activities, including community events, webinars, and collaborative initiatives aimed at deepening connections across the field.
We then had the chance to attend the two keynote presentations from prof. George Nounesis (NCSR Demokritos), an energetic session focused on data-driven pipelines in translational research. Drawing from his extensive experience in biomedical engineering, he illustrated how high-throughput data can be structured and leveraged to fuel AI discovery in a wide range of settings. Prof. Marina Garassino (University of Chicago) concluded the day with a comprehensive and deep overview of recent innovation and future high-impact perspectives of the integration of AI in cancer research, stemming from translational to clinical research, with an important message on the key role played by collaborations between biomedical, technical and SSH (health economics in particular) for its proper deployment and for the benefit of patients.
