Biomedical Mathematics Online Colloquium

Abstract: In typical single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) data analysis, a clustering algorithm is applied to find discrete cell clusters as putative cell types, and then a statistical test is employed to identify the differentially expressed (DE) genes between the cell clusters. However, this common procedure suffers the ``double dipping'' issue: the same data are used twice …

Abstract: The realization that microbiomes, associated with virtually all multicellular organisms, have tremendous impact on their host health is considered as one of the most important scientific discoveries in the last decade. The host associated microbiomes, composed of tens to hundreds of co-existing microbial species, are highly heterogenous at multiple scales (e.g. between different hosts …

Abstract: The study of sleep and circadian rhythms at scale requires novel technologies and approaches that are valid, cost effective and do not pose much of a burden to the participant. Here we will present our recent studies in which we have evaluated several classes of technologies and approaches including wearables, nearables, blood based biomarkers …

Abstract: There has been an increased use of scoring systems in clinical settings for the purpose of assessing risks in a convenient manner that provides important evidence for decision making. Machine learning-based methods may be useful for identifying important predictors and building models; however, their 'black box' nature limits their interpretability as well as clinical …

Abstravt: Latent space dynamics identification (LaSDI) is an interpretable data-driven framework that follows three distinct steps, i.e., compression, dynamics identification, and prediction. Compression allows high-dimensional data to be reduced so that they can be easily fit into an interpretable model. Dynamics identification lets you derive the interpretable model, usually some form of parameterized differential equations …

Abstract:  The effect of malaria on the developing world is devastating. Each year there are more than 200 million cases and over 400,000 deaths, with children under the age of five the most vulnerable. Ambitious malaria elimination targets have been set by the World Health Organization for 2030. These involve the elimination of the disease …

Abstract: Malignant gliomas are highly invasive brain tumors. Recent attention has focused on their capacity for network-driven invasion, whereby mitotic events can be followed by the migration of nuclei along long thin cellular protrusions, termed tumour microtubes (TM). Here I develop a mathematical model that describes this microtube-driven invasion of gliomas. I show that scaling …

Abstract: Circadian clocks in cells and humans are heterogeneous in period and phase. This heterogeneity can be exploited not only to gain insight into the molecular basis of circadian rhythms, but also to explore plasticity and robustness. In this talk, I will report on two ongoing projects in the lab: (i) We are exploiting the …

Abstract The standard theory of infectious diseases, tracing back to the work of Kermack and McKendrick nearly a century ago, has been a triumph of mathematical biology, a rare marriage of theory and application. Yet the limitations of its most simple representations, which has always been known, have been laid bare in dealing with COVID-19, …

Abstract Our present healthcare system focuses on treating people when they are ill rather than keeping them healthy. We have been using big data and remote monitoring approaches to monitor people while they are healthy to keep them that way and detect disease at its earliest moment presymptomatically. We use advanced multiomics technologies (genomics, immunomics, …

Abstract Individual human cancer cells often show different responses to the same treatment. In this talk I will share the quantitative experimental approaches my lab has developed for studying the fate and behavior of human cells at the single-cell level. I will focus on the tumor suppressor protein p53, a transcription factor controlling genomic integrity …

Abstract The advent of single-cell transcriptomics has brought a greatly improved understanding of the heterogeneity of gene expression across cell types, with important applications in developmental biology and cancer research. Single-cell RNA sequencing datasets, which are based on tags called universal molecular identifiers, typically include a large number of zeroes. For such datasets, genes with …