Haitian Scientific Society 2021 Seminar Series

Modeling cellular response: Application to precision medicine

Kourosh Zarringhalam
Associate Professor and Director of Computational Sciences (CSci) graduate program
Department of Mathematics University of Massachusetts Boston

Abstract:

The abundance of many RNA transcripts changes significantly in response to a variety of molecular and environmental perturbations. A key question in this setting is as follows: what intermediate molecular perturbations gave rise to the observed transcriptional changes? As changes beyond transcriptional level are rarely measured, direct inference of causal regulatory mechanisms is difficult and remains a central challenge in computational biology. In this talk, we present statistical and Bayesian approaches to query causal networks of bio-molecular interactions and identify intermediate molecular causes of transcriptional response. Additionally, we present a weighted group-lasso regularized model to predict diagnostic markers for precision medicine application. Using nested cross-validation as well as independent clinical datasets, we demonstrate that our approach leads to increased accuracy and generalizable results.

Research Interests: I am interested in the application of mathematics and computational algorithms in biological systems. In particular, I study machine learning models for biomarker discovery, precision medicine, and patient stratification; causal reasoning models for inference of stimuli-induced active biological pathways; and models of transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulation. Specialties: Applied mathematics, Machine learning, Bioinformatics, Statistics, and Software development for biological applications.

Date and time:

Saturday, November 27, 2021
12:45 PM—2:30 PM

Zoom Meeting Link:

https://umassboston.zoom.us/j/92364326608