Despina Kontos Selected as 2026 Breast Cancer Research Foundation Investigator

Despina Kontos, PhD, has been named a 2026 Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) Investigator, joining an international group of scientists supported by one of the world’s leading funders of breast cancer research.

Kontos, the Herbert and Florence Irving Professor of Radiological Sciences and vice chair of AI, Data Science, and Engineering Research in the Department of Radiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will receive $225,000 for a one-year study developing a new artificial intelligence approach to more accurately predict an individual woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.

BCRF’s investigator grants are awarded through a competitive, invitation-only process in which its Scientific Advisory Board identifies researchers pursuing promising new directions in breast cancer research. Kontos is a first-time BCRF Investigator in 2026.

Kontos’ project, “Next-Generation AI-Driven Multi-Modal Risk Assessment Models for Breast Cancer,” addresses a longstanding challenge in breast cancer screening: determining which women are most likely to develop breast cancer so screening and prevention can be tailored to their individual risk.

Current risk assessment tools rely on factors such as age, family and reproductive history, breast density, and genetics, but they can be cumbersome to use and are not routinely incorporated into clinical care. Kontos and her team are developing an artificial intelligence (AI) model that will bring several types of information together—notably including 3D mammography images as well as clinical risk factors,and genetic information—to produce a more individualized assessment of breast cancer risk.

The research builds on Kontos’ longstanding work using AI to extract information from medical images that may not be apparent to the human eye. Her group has been among the first to develop AI methods that use digital breast tomosynthesis, or 3D mammography, to predict breast cancer risk, and their recent research suggests that measures derived from 3D images can outperform those based on conventional 2D mammography.

With BCRF support, the team will create a research database linking 3D mammograms with clinical and available genetic information from more than 12,000 women screened at Columbia. They will use these data to develop and evaluate a new AI model designed specifically for 3D mammography. The model will also be evaluated across age, breast density, and racial and ethnic groups to assess how consistently it performs across different populations.

Ultimately, the goal is to make breast cancer risk assessment more accurate and easier to incorporate into routine screening—helping clinicians identify women who may benefit from additional screening or prevention strategies while allowing care to be more precisely tailored to each patient.

Kontos is the founding director of Columbia’s Center for Innovation in Imaging Biomarkers and Integrated Diagnostics (CIMBID) and chief research information officer for Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Her research focuses on applying artificial intelligence and data science to medical imaging to develop biomarkers that can help personalize cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment.