Karen Belkic

I am a clinical scientist with a PhD in neuroscience and physician specialist in internal medicine. I am adjunct professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, School of Medicine, Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research and at the Claremont Graduate University School of Community and Global Health. I am also affiliated to the Department of Oncology-Pathology at Karolinska Institutet, where I hold a scientific tenure position. I earned my M.D. degree at University of Southern California School of Medicine.

My research activities are broad within several areas including preventive medicine, diagnostics and rehabilitation. In stress research and in molecular imaging, I have five published books and over 100 full length papers in peer-reviewed journals with over 2000 citations. I have twice been co-editor of special topical issues in peer-reviewed international journals. My work has strived to bridge clinical and basic scientific domains, seeking to answer to both these callings, by addressing difficult questions raised by multi-disciplinary, translational research. My major goal has been to find non-invasive, sensitive and specific tools that can identify initial and often reversible changes, at a stage when timely intervention could be most effective. My interest and expertize is in early detection, risk assessment and prevention with a focus on cancer and heart disease, with attention to psychosocial factors and the potential mediating mechanisms. My current scientific activity is focused upon improvement of early cancer detection through in vivo magnetic resonance by enhancing the diagnostic information obtained by applying modern advances in signal and imaging processing to signals encoded from patients with cancers, and comparing these to findings from non-malignant tissue. Younger women at high risk for breast and ovarian cancer are a particular target group. With my concern for vulnerable groups, I also address diagnostic issues among children, focusing upon pediatric neuro-oncology.

I have taken a broad view, looking not just at the immediate (i.e., proximal) markers of risk, but taking into account the more distal, and potentially key, determinants of disease. Thus, I have been very interested in how the environment (especially the work environment) impacts upon target organs, often mediated by the central nervous system. Within this framework, she has developed multi-level models. These incorporate, inter alia, non-linear, parametric methods in signal processing in relation to multiple physiological time signals for functional diagnostic testing. I am the originator of the widely implemented “Occupational Stressor Index”, a practical diagnostic tool for assessment and subsequent modification of the work environment. I am involved in risk assessment and determinants of adherence to cancer screening guidelines among vulnerable groups as well as design, implementation and testing of interventions for patients with cancer to return to health-promoting work conditions.

I have a special interest in pedagogy, in particular to help medical students and physicians at various levels of training acquire an appreciation of the importance of signal processing for medical diagnostics and to be able to identify situations in which this could be of critical significance in the clinical context, especially for cancer diagnostics.