Quantitative BioImaging Lab

We build computational methods that read more from every tissue section: multiplex imaging, histology-to-biomarker prediction, and simulations of the tumor microenvironment that connect what a slide shows to how a patient's disease will behave.

Young Hwan Chang, Ph.D; Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME); the Computational Biology Program in the School of Medicine; OHSU Center for Spatial Systems Biomedicine, Co-Leader, Knight Cancer Institute Quantitative Oncology Program, Affiliate of the Center for Biomedical Data Science (CBDS), Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU)

Biography: Dr. Young Hwan Chang received his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Claire J. Tomlin (EECS). Then, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Hybrid Systems Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley. Previously, he also worked at Cognitive Robotics Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and Hyundai-Kia R&D Center. 

Research Interests: (1) Multiplex tissue imaging methods (RESTORE, UniFORM, COEXIST, MIM-CyCIF); (2) From H&E to biomarkers with deep learning (SHIFT, miniMTI); (3) Modeling the tumor microenvironment with agent-based models and trajectory landscapes; (4) Clinical cohorts and 3D tissue: Barrett's esophagus, circulating hybrid cells, pancreatic and prostate cancer.

Lab Philosophy: Passionate & Self-motivated Team Player - "creativity is just connecting things" (Steve Jobs)

Google Scholar      ORCID

What's up in QBI Lab? 

• Oct 2026: Cameron will attend the HTAN-TBEL Joint meeting at Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, and give a talk: "An unsupervised approach to 3D spatial niche discovery from serial 2D tissue sections using histopathology foundation model embeddings"

• Oct 2026: YH attended the JKTG Foundation symposium and gave a talk: "Toward in silico Tissue Laboratory: Bridging Spatial Profiling and Tissue Modeling for Precision Medicine",  Hopkins Bloomberg Center, Washington DC

• Oct 2026: Congrats Eric!  Selected for $20,000 in Claude credits through the MIT–Anthropic AI for Science Study!

• Sep 2026: YH will give a talk and participate panel discussion at Multiplex Image Analysis & Computational Pathology hosted and supported by La Jolla Institute for Immunology in partnership with the QBI Society, September 15-16, San Diego, CA, USA

• Sep 2026: Congrats Cameron! His abstract (An unsupervised approach to 3D spatial niche discovery from serial 2D tissue sections using histopathology foundation model embeddings) has been selected for Session 2 of the HTAN-TBEL Data Science Mini-Symposium!

• Aug 2026: YH will serve on the Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Artificial Intelligence and Systems Biology Subcommittee for the AACR Annual Meeting 2027 Program Committee.

• Aug 2026: Congrats Cameron! NIH R50 Research Specialist Award was awarded!!

• Aug 2026: Congrats Prevail! Poster Award at B-BRITE Program

• Aug 2026: Congrats Brian! Best poster at the PSI Symposium

• Jul 2026: Awarded a collaborative R01 (MPI Drs. Heiser (contact), Chang and Macklin) NCI grant: "A multiscale approach to control cellular interaction in premalignant tissues"

• July 2026: YH was invited to participate in the AI Embeddings for Next Gen Cancer Diagnostics: Innovation Lab

• July 2026: Congrats Eric! "Trajectory Landscapes for Therapeutic Strategy Design in Agent-Based Tumor Microenvironment Models" has been accepted for presentation at the 2026 65th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)

• July 2026: YH will give a keynote lecture at the ISMB/ECCB 2026 MLCSB COSI track, July 12-16, 2026, Washington, DC 

• June 2026: Welcome Cameron (Computational Biologist), Prevail Li (B-Brite summer Intern), Brian Wei (PSI summer intern)

• June 2026: YH and Eric attend Spatial Biology – The New Frontier | June 16-17, 2026 | Rockville, MD

  • Eric presented "Bridging Agent-Based Simulation and Clinical Spatial Profiling with a Tumor-Immune Dynamic Landscape."

• May 2026: Congrats Eric! "Trajectory Landscapes for Therapeutic Strategy Design in Agent-Based Tumor Microenvironment Models" has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS).

  • https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11535459

• May 2026: New bioRxiv paper from the lab - Congrats Isis! 

  • Spatially resolved transcriptomic and proteomic profiling reveals cell interaction programs that predict Barrett's esophagus progression: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.08.723546v1

• April 2026: Congratulations Eric! His abstract was selected for the Junior Investigator Oral Presentation (with travel support) at the Spatial Biology: The New Frontier meeting on June 16–17, 2026

  • https://hubmapconsortium.org/spatial-biology-meeting-agenda-2026/

• March 2026: New bioRxiv paper from the lab - congrats Eric!

  • Tumor-immune trajectory context connects static tissue architecture to clinical outcomes: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.26.714521v1

• March 2026: Congrats Isis! Collaborative work with Stuart Ibsen, “Going Beyond Immunostained Biomarker Fluorescence Intensity of Electrode Arrays for Dielectrophoresis-Based Differentiation of Pancreatic Cancer from Benign Diseases,” has been accepted as a poster at DEP2026.

• Feb 2026: Sandhya attends SPIE Medical Imaging and presents a poster titled “Leveraging deep learning for enhanced 3D confocal imaging of circulating hybrid cells" - featured at SPIE Medical Imaging!

• Jan 2026: New bioRxiv papers from the lab:

  • miniMTI: minimal multiplex tissue imaging enhances biomarker expression prediction from histology: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.21.700911v1.abstract

• Happy New Year!