PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hugo Aerts

Hugo Aerts is a medical AI researcher who applies machine learning to medical images for cancer research. He earned an engineering master's at Eindhoven Institute of Technology, completed a PhD at Maastricht University in 2010, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard School of Public Health. His work has included the PyRadiomics platform, a cancer-imaging foundation model, and FaceAge studies that use facial photographs to estimate biological age and examine cancer outcomes. As of October 2026, he is a Harvard Medical School professor of radiation oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, directs the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) Program at Mass General Brigham, and is an adjunct professor at Maastricht University.

Works
624
Citations
63,581
h-index
94
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2010

    A PhD in medical imaging

    At Maastricht University's Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, he defends a doctoral thesis on molecular imaging and drug uptake in 2010, with supervisors Ph. Lambin and D.K. De Ruysscher and co-supervisor A.L.A.J. Dekker. His training includes an engineering master's at Eindhoven Institute of Technology and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard School of Public Health.

  2. 2014–2017

    Radiomics and PyRadiomics

    His 2014 study measures 440 radiomic features from CT scans of 1,019 patients with lung or head-and-neck cancer and finds prognostic value in many features. A 2017 paper he coauthors introduces PyRadiomics, an open-source Python platform for extracting features from medical images, demonstrated on lung lesions.

  3. 2020

    An ERC grant in oncology

    A 2020 international consortium led by Aerts and AIM investigators receives an ERC grant from the European Union's Horizon program. With Maastricht University collaborators, the team applies AI and deep learning to tumor images to develop imaging biomarkers that can help guide cancer-treatment decisions.

  4. 2022

    Top 1% citation recognition

    Web of Science recognizes him among the world's top 1% most-cited scientists in 2022.

  5. 2024

    A cancer imaging model

    In 2024, he serves as corresponding author of a paper on a cancer-imaging foundation model. It uses self-supervised pretraining on 11,467 lesions identified on CT imaging and supports downstream diagnostic and prognostic biomarker tasks, especially when training data are small.

  6. 2025

    FaceAge from photographs

    FaceAge uses facial photographs to estimate biological age and cancer-survival time; in 2025, he co-senior authors the study. It finds that FaceAge scores above chronological age are associated with worse outcomes across several cancer types.

  7. April 2026

    A second FaceAge study

    In April 2026, he co-senior authors the Nature Communications follow-up study, which introduces FaceAge 2.0 and links slower face aging between two photographs to better cancer survival. FaceAge 2.0 is trained on 40 million images of faces from around the world, 700,000 images of faces of known age, and images of 24,000 cancer patients with known outcomes.

  8. As of October 2026

    Harvard professor and AIM director

    As of October 2026, he is a Harvard Medical School professor of radiation oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, directs the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) Program at Mass General Brigham, and is an adjunct professor at Maastricht University.

Career

  1. NowHarvard UniversityProfessor of Radiation Oncology
  2. NowDana-Farber Cancer InstituteProfessor of Radiation Oncology, Harvard Medical School at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
  3. NowMass General BrighamDirector, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIM) Program
  4. NowMaastricht UniversityAdjunct Professor
  5. Harvard UniversityPostdoctoral Fellow

Education

  1. 2010Maastricht UniversityPhD
  2. Eindhoven University of TechnologyMaster's in engineering

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Checked career sources: news.harvard.edu.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hugo Aerts yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Wetenschapsagenda december 2010 — Maastricht University maastrichtuniversity.nl. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Hugo Aerts — AIM - Harvard aim.mgh.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. AI Key to Noninvasive Biomarker Development in Lung Cancer — RSNA rsna.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Computational Radiomics System to Decode the Radiographic Phenotype — PMC pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Horizon 2020 ERC awarded to AIM scientists — AIM - Harvard aim.mgh.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Artificial Intelligence Drives New Approaches to Cancer Care — Mass General Brigham news.massgeneralbrigham.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. New AI tool predicts biological age by looking at a face — Harvard Gazette news.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. Predicting cancer outcomes with a selfie — Harvard Gazette news.harvard.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.