Bioengineering Seminar Series - Dr. Russell Schwartz

Dr. Russell Schwartz, Professor of Computational Biology and Biological Sciences at Carnegie Melon University, will present "Towards comprehensive portraits of somatic evolution and cancer progression via multimodal data integration."

Abstract

We have seen dramatic advances in biotechnology for probing genomics of complex tissues in fine spatial and temporal detail, advances that have been particularly impactful in understanding single-cell heterogeneity at play in complex tissues such as cancers undergoing a process of somatic evolution. The more we can observe, though, the more we appreciate the immense complexity of these processes. Genetic evolution of clonal cell populations unfolds in time and space in parallel with changing population dynamics of cell types and functional adaptation at the single-cell level of both tumor and non-tumor cell populations, with each part of this process shaping and shaped by the others. Producing a coherent picture of the complexity of the biology has depended on advances in computational tools concurrent with advances in biotechnology. This talk explores some of these computational directions as we work to integrate diverse data modalities, each giving a distinct window into the biology, to capture a more complete model of the process of somatic evolution and its functional consequences. We conclude with a consideration of emerging directions for tackling these problems, drawing on artificial intelligence, computationally-driven experimental design, and their synthesis into autonomous science.