Alumni Profile: James Kang

Gastroenterologist Dr James Kang (Clinical Medicine, 2011) was awarded the 2022-23 Fulbright-Elsevier Data Analytics Award in September 2021. As well as being a Royal Society of Medicine Ellison Cliffe Travelling Fellow, James is using his Fulbright Scholarship to undertake a Master’s in Public Health and a Graduate Certificate in Applied Data Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also working as a visiting research fellow at Kaiser Permanente, Northern California.

Since qualifying in 2014, James has worked in the East of England, first as an Academic Foundation doctor, then as an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow and more recently as a Specialist Registrar and Chief Resident at James Paget Hospital. Between hospital shifts, James learned to work with large epidemiological datasets as part of a European cohort study examining the role of nutrition in cancer development.

James is interested in epidemiology and ‘big data’ analytics to improve healthcare delivery and equity. He is currently particularly focused on using big data to develop risk prediction models for early cancer detection and believes such methodology will be applicable to many different health problems.

As a preclinical student James was drawn to GTC by its reputation as ‘the medic college’, owing to its sizeable medical student population and large teaching faculty. Being part of a community of students and tutors with a wide range of medical interests afforded numerous opportunities to gain experience in teaching, audit and research. James benefitted from college funding to attend and present at several medical conferences.

James is especially grateful to former Senior Doll Fellow Dr Laurence Leaver for his support, encouragement, and mentorship throughout his time at GTC. The biggest example of this was a research project as a final year student, in which James came up with the idea, found suitable supervisors and collaborators, wrote the protocol, applied for ethical approval and funding, and carried out the study. Dr Leaver’s guidance was instrumental throughout and helped cement James’ interest in pursuing research as part of his future medical career.