His project has been awarded a 100,000 Euro grant by the ICPO Foundation and was selected from
18 high-quality submissions from twelve countries
February 17, 2026 – Wiesbaden, Germany. The International Centers for Precision Oncology (ICPO) Foundation today announced the recipient of its first AI Research Call focused on “AI-driven Advancements in Precision Oncology,” which comes with 100.000 Euros in grant funding. “The goal of this initiative is to lay the groundwork that will allow artificial intelligence to become clinically meaningful, trustworthy, and ultimately beneficial for patient care in the field of Theranostics,” explained Sen h. c. Udo Vetter, Chairman of the ICPO Foundation. In daily clinical practice, medical data is often fragmented and heterogeneous, particularly in Theranostics, where imaging, clinical, and treatment data are stored across various systems. “To use digital tools responsibly and effectively for research, the underlying data must first be well curated, structured, and harmonized,” commented Prof. Richard P. Baum, Trustee of the ICPO Foundation and President of the ICPO Academy for Theranostics. Accordingly, the first year of this three-year ICPO initiative will focus on building a robust data infrastructure, before addressing more advanced research questions in the following years. The winning project is “ARCHE – An AI-driven Curation and Harmonization Engine for Structuring Multimodal Theranostics Data,” led by Prof. Lalith Kumar Shiyam Sundar at Ludwig Maximilian University Hospital in Munich, Germany.
“With this project, the ICPO Foundation is not just funding research — we are investing in a framework that will shape the future of Precision Oncology and strengthen the global ICPO Centers Network,” stated Odile Jaume, CEO of the ICPO Foundation
“For decades, data curation for AI projects has often been treated as an afterthought, yet high-quality, structured, and clean data are fundamental to AI success. Researchers typically spend most of their time preparing datasets rather than innovating. Thanks to the ICPO’s forward-thinking support, we finally have dedicated resources to elevate automated data curation into a formal field of study,” said Prof. Lalith Kumar Shiyam Sundar from Ludwig Maximilian University Hospital, Munich, Germany, expressing his gratitude for receiving this ICPO AI Research Grant
The ICPO received 18 high-quality applications from 12 countries spanning Africa, North America, Asia, and Europe. All submissions were thoroughly reviewed by an international evaluation committee made up of six experts from both the ICPO Scientific Advisory Board and the AI field, combining expertise in nuclear medicine, physics, and artificial intelligence.
The selected project “ARCHE – An AI-driven Curation and Harmonization Engine for Structuring Multimodal Theranostics Data” proposes an AI-native harmonization engine specifically designed for Theranostics data, to be implemented at a single high-volume clinical center, and developed using a large, fully accessible real-world cohort of more than 1,000 patient datasets including various radioisotopes. This creates a unique opportunity to move from concept to implementation, and to demonstrate how structured, multimodal data can become a shared asset for the Theranostics community.
The announcement was made at the Theranostics World Congress 2026, held in Cape Town, South Africa.
Photo caption: Prof. Lalith Kumar Shiyam Sundar, LMU c received the first AI Research Grant with 100K Euros in funding from the ICPO Foundation
About ICPO Foundation
The International Centers for Precision Oncology Foundation (ICPO) is a nonprofit organization established in 2019 under German law by leading international medical practitioners and life sciences entrepreneurs. Recognizing a major shift in cancer care toward personalized treatment, the ICPO Foundation is helping build momentum to expand global patient access by developing an international network of physical diagnostic and therapeutic centers for Precision Oncology. This network is built on a model of shared expertise, certified education through the ICPO Academy for Theranostics, and standardized design and processes that enable best clinical practices to improve patient outcomes worldwide.
To learn more about the ICPO Foundation at www.icpo.foundation and the ICPO Academy for Theranostics at
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