As I sit down to write my first #RADxx community blog post, I’d like to introduce myself to you all and share my goals for this exciting new community of women radiologists and informaticists.

My interest in informatics began several years ago during my first American College of Radiology meeting as a first year radiology resident. Meeting enthusiastic and engaged radiologists from across the country, I was excited to hear how experts in our field were pouring over data in new and inventive ways with impressive and incredibly useful results. Their efforts to improve the storage, retrieval ,and reporting of imaging data pushed me to seek out opportunities at my home institution and even branch into exploring opportunities in artificial intelligence. I’ve since completed residency in diagnostic radiology and fellowship training in cardiothoracic imaging and nuclear medicine. Having just completed fellowship in June, I began my career as an attending in cardiovascular and thoracic imaging at UCLA just last month.

The American College of Radiology has remained an important part of my career and continues to inspire me to reach further in my clinical and research efforts. At this year’s annual ACR meeting, I was fortunate to join the ACR’s Commission on Informatics. I’m incredibly happy to assist in the College’s efforts to coordinate our IT and Informatics activities. This is a particularly exciting time in Informatics at the ACR with the launch of a brand new Data Science Institute, and I’m honored to be a part of the Informatics team.

During my training, I heard many an attending tell me that their education really began once they’d finished their residency and fellowship. Having just finished my first attending month, I believe this advice more than I ever did. While training provides the fundamentals needed to navigate an imaging career, in this quickly evolving field, learning truly is lifelong. As I continue to strengthen my own skill set in informatics and data science, I hope to share useful resources and tips with you all. Envisioning this being most successful as a collaborative process, I hope you all will chime in with resources you have found useful so that we can grow stronger as a group. Thanks for having me as a part of this RADxx community. I look forward to growing alongside you all.