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Jake Chen, Ph.D., Chief Bioinformatics Officer of the UAB Informatics Institute, served as the session chair of Representational Learning in Genome Biology and Precision Medicine during the Great Lakes Bioinformatics (GLBIO) Conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The conference was held from May 15th-18th at McGill University, and was organized by the Great Lakes Bioinformatics Consortium for the purpose of hosting a forum to discuss research findings and methods. GLBIO’s primary goal was to provide a platform of establishing networking opportunities and joint relationships as it relates to computational approaches to biology. Dr. Chen’s session aimed to bring various perspectives from researchers and trainees to establish discussions reconsidering how to use artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) power more efficiently for a better disease biology understanding. Some of the topics discussed included:Characterizing and reducing data noises from different omics platforms for AI/ML applications? Characterizing and reducing data noises from different omics platforms for AI/ML applications Identifying data pre-processing techniques that will assist in normalizing, combining, and comparing multi-omics results from different experimental conditions Identifying ways to balance knowledge-guided and knowledge-agnostic approaches in the development of AI/ML predictive models Inferring the cellular states and their dynamics, along with multi-scale causal network knowledge using AI/ML[…]
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Sooryanarayana Varambally, Ph.D., MBA, professor in the Department of Pathology's Division of Molecular and Cellular Pathology and adjunct faculty at the Informatics Institute, was one of the 16 faculty members who were named the winners of the 2023 Dean's Excellence Awards for Faculty. The award recognizes individuals nominated by their colleagues for significant acheivements in mentorship, research, teaching, and fostering diversity within the Heersink School of Medicine. Dr. Varambally was awarded the senior faculty 2023 Dean's Excellence Award in Research, and his research focuses on identifying therapeutic targets in various solid tumors along with progression and metastasis. For more information about Dr. Varambally and his award, please click here.
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The University of Alabama at Birmingham hosted the Service Learning and Undergraduate Research Expo from April 17th through April 21st. Maryam Choucha, a Bioinformatics student, received first place at the 2023 Spring Expo in the Physical and Applied Sciences category, for her online poster presentation entitled "Curating Genes and Network Models for Glioblastoma Drug Discovery."Maryam Choucha, recipient of the 2023 Most Outstanding Student Award in Bioinformatics As part of the 10-minute online video presentation, the project highlighted methods related to the use of bioinformatics pipelines in assisting with finding connections between genes, pathways, and drugs for Glioblastoma (GBM), a type of cancer that forms in the brain or spinal cord. Maryam was able to complete research for this project with Jake Chen, Ph.D., Professor of Genetics and Computer Science of the UAB Informatics Institute. The research was completed over the course of the entire Spring 2023 semester, with the presentation taking place in a public forum allowing participants to engage in an interactive Q & A session. The purpose of the research was to aid in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) drug discovery through the creation of a case study highlighting the interactions and value that can be found[…]
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The UAB Informatics Institute, along with the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS), hosted the 7th Annual Translational and Transformative Informatics Symposium (ATTIS 2023) on April 21 with the theme of “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Medicine and Healthcare”. Panel members speaking during ATTIS 2023ATTIS 2023 attracted more than 250 registered attendees from 30 universities and other organizations, and was held both in person at the Margaret Cameron Spain Auditorium of UAB and online over Zoom. Speakers of ATTIS 2023 with various presentations focusing on critical aspects of artificial intelligence in medicine, including: the application of learning models predicting responses to chemotherapy in breast cancer patients, the integration of AI within antiviral drug discovery, precision medicine’s implementation of AI to its research, the role of AI in medical imaging as it relates to radiogenomics, and the analysis of sequencing data via auto encoder. ATTIS 2023 Program Chair Jake Chen, Ph.D., UAB Professor of Genetics, Computer Science, and Biomedical Engineering, opened the conference stating that there has been accelerated adoption of deep learning, large language models, and general AI methodology in biomedical sciences, from pathology imaging to genomics. The keynote speaker was Trey Ideker, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine, Bioengineering, and Computer[…]
