Translational Bioinformatics Workshop 2021
Translational bioinformatics (TBI) is a multi-disciplinary and rapidly emerging field of biomedical data sciences and informatics that includes the development of technologies that efficiently translate basic molecular, genetic, cellular, and clinical data into clinical products or health implications. TBI is a relatively young discipline that spans a wide spectrum from big data to comprehensive analytics to diagnostics and therapeutics. TBI involves applying novel methods to the storage, analysis, and interpretation of a massive volume of ‘omics and clinical data, and it bridges the gap between bench research and real-world applications to human health.
Many health-related topics are increasingly falling within the scope of TBI, including rare and complex human disease, cancer, biomarkers, pharmacogenomics, drug repositioning, and clinical decision support systems.
TBI in precision medicine attempts to determine individual solutions based on the genomic, environmental, and clinical profiles of each individual, providing an opportunity to incorporate individual genomic data into patient care. While a plethora of genomic signatures have successfully demonstrated their predictive power, they are merely statistically-significant differences between dichotomized phenotypes that are in fact severely heterogeneous. Despite many translational barriers, connecting the molecular world to the clinical world and vice versa will undoubtedly benefit human health in the near future.
TBC began in 2011, as a venue for highlighting the multi-disciplinary nature of the research field and to provide an opportunity to bring together translational bioinformatics researchers. TBC has always put an emphasis on promoting translational bioinformatics research activities initiated in the Asia-Pacific region, where the meetings have been held in Korea, China, and Japan. We have also hosted one event in Los Angeles, CA. For TBC 2020, we would like to bring the event to the Pacific, and host a workshop in conjunction with PSB, rather than an independent conference. Translational bioinformatics is a fast-moving field and we believe that bringing the TBC community together with the biocomputing community at PSB will be mutually beneficial.
The workshop will take place on January 7th from 10am to 1pm PST.
Speakers
Marzyeh Ghassemi, PhD
Canada Research Chair, Departments of Computer Science/Medicine
Canadian CIFAR AI Chair, Vector Institute
MIT Computer Science AI Lab (CSAIL) Affiliate
Dr. Marzyeh Ghassemi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto in Computer Science and Medicine, and a Vector Institute faculty member holding a Canadian CIFAR AI Chair and Canada Research Chair. She will join MIT’s IMES/EECS in July 2021.
Professor Ghassemi currently serves as a NeurIPS 2019 Workshop Co-Chair, and General Chair for the ACM Conference on Health, Inference and Learning (CHIL). Previously, she was a Visiting Researcher with Alphabet’s Verily and a post-doc with Dr. Peter Szolovits at MIT.
Jonathan Haines, PhD
Director, Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology
Chair, Department of Population & Quantitative Health Sciences
Mary W. Sheldon M.D. Professor of Genomic Sciences
Jonathan Haines, PhD, is an internationally recognized researcher and educator with extensive experience in all aspects of genetic epidemiology. He has led or collaborated on dozens of national and international genetic studies related to brain and eye disorders and has located more than 20 causal and 300 associated genetic loci.
Janina M. Jeff, PhD, MS
Senior Bioinformatics Scientist (Microarrays), Illumina
Janina M. Jeff is an American geneticist and senior scientist at Illumina. She was the first African American to earn a PhD in Human Genetics at Vanderbilt University and is the host of the podcast In Those Genes. She focuses on identifying genetic variants that explain disease disparities and is known for her work in science communication.
Dokyoon Kim, PhD
Assistant Professor of Informatics, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Dokyoon Kim has expertise in data integration using machine learning and focuses on improving diagnostics and treatment through multi-omics data, biological knowledge, and imaging data integration.
Organizers
Dokyoon Kim, PhD
Assistant Professor of Informatics, University of Pennsylvania
Ju Han Kim, MD, PhD, SM
Professor and Founding Chair, Division of Biomedical Informatics, Seoul National Univ. College of Medicine
Dr. Kim develops integrated personal genome interpretation systems to understand the genomic landscape of human health and disease.
Jason Moore, PhD
Director, Institute for Biomedical Informatics, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Moore is a leading figure in translational bioinformatics and human genetics. His work includes developing AI methods like multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) and integrating complex data to predict health outcomes.
Schedule (PST)
10:00 – Marzyeh Ghassemi, PhD – “How to do Healthy Machine Learning in Health?”
10:30 – Dokyoon Kim, PhD – “Translational Research using EHR-linked Biobank Data”
11:00 – Janina Jeff, PhD, MS – “Advancing Precision Medicine in Diverse Populations Through Technology and Culturally Relevant Community Engagement”
11:30 – Jonathan Haines, PhD – “Applying Polygenic Risk Scores: Hope or Hype?”
12:00 – Panel discussion