Pankil Shah, M.D, Ph.D., M.S.P.H.

Dr. Shah received his MD in 2005 from Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital in Mumbai India, his MSPH in Epidemiology from Texas A&M University School of Rural Public Health in 2008 and his PhD, also in Epidemiology, from the University of Texas at Houston School of Public Health.  Dr. Shah joined the faculty of the Department of Urology in 2018 as an Assistant Professor.

Dr. Shah is a cancer epidemiologist and data scientist focusing on the utilization of big data generated from public databases, electronic medical records, and omics (gene expression, microbiome, metabolome) for predictive risk modeling to develop evidence-based precision public health strategies. He has twelve years of research experience, including clinical trial management, designing and conducting retrospective and prospective epidemiologic studies, training and leading data teams, and facilitating multidisciplinary collaborative research efforts. His research interests include cancer epidemiology and risk assessment, patient-reported outcomes and symptom research, patient satisfaction and education, and institutional performance improvement. By leveraging his medical training and data science skills, he can develop and conduct independent and collaborative research. Over the past years, Dr. Shah has collaborated with researchers at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center and UT Health San Antonio on various projects such as examining epidemiology and outcomes of respiratory viral infections in patients with cancer to reduce post-surgical symptom burden in small cell carcinoma patients. Together, they have developed the immunodeficiency scoring index, which predicts the probability of progression to pneumonia and death in patients with cancer who acquire RSV infection. This predictive algorithm enabled MD Anderson to save costs and patient lives over the past years and is now being validated by a multinational consortium effort.  He has also developed and validated multiple psychometric scales to measure symptom burden. In addition to research, Dr. Shah is also passionate about education and mentors’ pediatric residents and master’s students on their thesis’ and helped to develop a program evaluation tool to examine the efficacy of the ‘academic half-day’ educational program for fellows at UT MD Anderson.  Dr. Shah is currently co-leading a project prioritized by Cancer Consortium on COVID-19 (https://ccc19us.org/) to develop and validate a risk scoring index for predicting severe outcomes of COVID-19 in patients with cancer and is also leading the program evaluation and quality improvement efforts at the Center for Life, a central Organ Procurement Center for Texas Organ Sharing Alliance at the University Transplant Center, University Health System.