Dante Merlino headshot

Dante Merlino, MD, PhD

Head and Neck Surgical Oncologist

Visiting Assistant Professor · Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery
University of Illinois College of Medicine · UI Health, Chicago

Fellowship, Head and Neck Surgical Oncology & Microvascular Reconstruction — University of Pennsylvania
Residency, Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery — Mayo Clinic

Full CV 1-Page Summary Email Save to Contacts GitHub Google Scholar

About

Head and neck surgical oncologist and physician–scientist. My clinical practice covers the surgical management of head and neck malignancy, including transoral robotic surgery and microvascular free tissue reconstruction. My research applies data science and applied AI to surgical outcomes, quality measurement, and the clinical data infrastructure that supports them.

Head and Neck Oncology Transoral Robotic Surgery Microvascular Reconstruction Surgical Outcomes Research Clinical Data & AI

Clinical and Research Focus

  • Clinical: Surgical management of head and neck cancer; transoral robotic surgery; microvascular free tissue transfer
  • Research: Surgical quality metrics; treatment de-escalation in HPV-mediated oropharyngeal carcinoma
  • Informatics: Clinical data pipelines, outcomes registries, and applied language models in surgical care
  • Technology: Python, SQL, Databricks, MLflow, LangChain/LangGraph, Epic Clarity/Caboodle, Google Cloud Platform

Selected Work

  • AI Agents for Surgical Analytics: An MLflow and LangGraph pipeline for post-operative readmission classification and automated SQL optimization.
  • Healthcare Informatics Dashboards: Epic→Databricks pipelines powering quality and surgical volume dashboards used by clinical leadership.
  • LLM-Assisted Documentation Review: Structured parsing and classification of clinical notes in support of outcomes research.

Contact