Group Co-Chair

Mitchell D. Schnall, MD, PhD, is the Group Co-Chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN) since its founding in 2012. He is Chairman of the Department of Radiology and the Eugene P. Pendergrass Professor of Radiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He is a physician at Penn Medicine within its Abdominal Imaging Services program.

Dr. Schnall is an international leader in translational biomedical and imaging research, working throughout his career across the interface between basic imaging science and clinical medicine to ensure effective integration of radiology research with other medical disciplines. His work has led to fundamental changes in the imaging approaches to breast and prostate cancer. The multiple clinical studies under his direction were the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), the Digital Mammography Imaging Screening Trial (DMIST), and the National CT Colonography Trial.

Within ECOG-ACRIN, Dr. Schnall co-leads the organization’s governance. He is a member of several scientific committees. He co-directs the Cancer Control and Outcomes Program and is a co-principal investigator for two grants from the National Cancer Institute: the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Research Base and the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN). He currently oversees the Tomosynthesis Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (TMIST) and he continues to have a significant influence on emerging imaging technologies, including those in optical imaging.

Dr. Schnall first became part of the Group as the Deputy Chair of the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) when the network was founded in 1999. He was elected Group Chair of ACRIN in 2008. Before merging with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) in 2012 to form the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, ACRIN was a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-sponsored cancer cooperative group that designed, conducted, and reported on multicenter clinical trials of imaging in cancer and conducted similar research in neurology and cardiovascular through non-NCI funding.

Dr. Schnall has been the principal investigator for numerous University of Pennsylvania team science initiatives. He maintains active membership in numerous national and international organizations. He received his undergraduate, medical, and doctorate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he has served on the Radiology Department faculty since 1991 and as a full professor since 2002. In 2012, he was named Chair of the Radiology Department. Dr. Schnall is a Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine, one of the most highly regarded honors in biomedicine, in 2012.

Link to Dr. Schnall’s Penn Medicine bio