Federated Foundational Models: 2026 AACR Annual Meeting
April 21, 2026 | 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Room 2 (Upper Level), San Diego Convention Center San Diego, CA
If you’re attending the 2026 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, make sure you catch this presentation from NCI CBIIT staff!
Drs. Juli Klemm, Shannon Silkensen, and Umit Topaloglu will highlight how NCI’s Federated Learning based AI in Multi-Modal Exploration (FLAIMME) consortium is helping cancer centers share advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models while preserving data privacy.
The team will present:
- FLAIMME’s infrastructure, governance model, and standardization.
- how FLAIMME is adapting MedGemma (Gemma 3-based medical AI) to collaboratively customize large models for cancer-relevant tasks such as clinical trial matching and treatment response prediction.
- available resources, opportunities for collaboration, and guidance on how to join the multi-institutional consortium.
FLAIMME lowers barriers to collaborative oncology AI development by enabling multi-institutional model training without centralizing patient data. This consortium consists of NCI CBIIT and NCI-designated cancer centers, including the Moffitt Cancer Center, Wake Forest University, the Medical University of South Carolina, and UT Health Houston.
Speakers
Juli Klemm, Ph.D.
Dr. Klemm is the acting director of NCI CBIIT. She is responsible for overseeing CBIIT’s mission to empower NCI staff and the broader cancer research community with the data science, information technology, and data sharing tools necessary to improve our understanding and treatment of cancer.
Shannon Silkensen, Ph.D.
Dr. Silkensen is a health science administrator in NCI CBIIT’s Clinical & Translational Research Informatics Branch.
Umit Topaloglu, Ph.D.
Dr. Topaloglu is branch chief of NCI CBIIT’s Clinical & Translational Research Informatics Branch. In this position, he leads NCI’s clinical research informatics strategy across precision medicine (including biomarker-driven trial readiness and matching), clinical trials reporting, and enterprise modernization.