天美传媒

Dr. Raphael Gottardo is a computational biologist who specializes in applying rapidly evolving ideas in data science to solving problems in cancer and related diseases. As scientific director of the Translational Data Science Integrated Research Center, he is at the center of the busy intersection of biology, data science and technology at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

His goal is to expand data-driven innovations for patients by cultivating a cross-disciplinary environment in which doctors and laboratory scientists work seamlessly with their colleagues in biostatistics and computational sciences to take advantage of the flood of information made possible by advanced technologies. 

The aim is to bring scientific discoveries from research labs to the bedside sooner using data-driven approaches. To do so, bench scientists and clinical researchers from many corners of the Hutch work collaboratively with experts in data science.

Much of his work is focused on profiling the cellular components of the human immune system 鈥� using data science to understand how to make immunotherapies work better for patients. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 when you get into the details that it really becomes interesting,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he immune system is very complex, and it turns out we don鈥檛 know a whole lot about it yet. Looking at these single-cell technologies generating massive amounts of data has brought me to really cool statistical and computational challenges.鈥�

Dr. Gottardo鈥檚 own research involves the development of computational tools for vaccine and immunology studies, including high-throughput experiments that may use flow cytometry or high-speed genome sequencing. His current studies include:
鈥�	Statistical and computational analysis of flow cytometry data
鈥�	Development of statistical and computational methods for single-cell genomics
鈥�	Immune responses to malaria and HIV infection and immunization within the Human Immunology Project Consortium (HIPC)
鈥�	Development of the HIPC database and research portal (www.immunespace.org)
鈥�	Contribution to the Bioconductor project, an open computing resource for genomics
鈥�	Leadership for the Vaccine and Immunology Statistical Center of the Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
鈥�	Leadership for the Vaccine Statistical Support (VSS) Global Health Vaccine Accelerating Platform (GH-VAP) of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Dr. Gottardo is the J. Orin Edson Foundation Endowed Chair at Fred Hutch and a member of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease and Public Health Sciences Divisions. He, along with other Fred Hutch researchers, is co-leading a collaboration with the Allen Institute for Immunology to chart the human immune system by harnessing big data and emerging technologies.

An affiliate professor of statistics at the University of Washington, he teaches courses in stochastic modeling, bioinformatics and statistical computing and supervises biostatistics and statistics doctoral students on statistical-methods research for high-dimensional omics data analysis

Like many scientists, invested teachers became powerful mentors in Noah鈥檚 life, and helped define his career. As an undergraduate student, he started working in the lab of Dr. Jim Carrington at Oregon State University. 鈥淏efore I started working in the lab, I hadn鈥檛 thought about working with plants. I became really interested in the research they were doing in the Carrington Lab, so I decided to go to graduate school and work in the lab as a PhD student,鈥� explains Noah.

At the same time, Noah began pursuing a career in plant science, a new technology was emerging in the scientific community: high-throughput DNA sequencing. 鈥淲e went from sequencing a few hundred DNA molecules at a time to doing millions at a time.鈥� A year into grad school, the lab was collecting so much data that he began learning how to program and do data analysis with a computer. 鈥淚 shifted pretty hard away from lab work at that point.鈥� He hasn鈥檛 looked back since.

Today, Noah leads the Data Science Facility. His team builds computational tools that help other scientists solve big data problems. These custom tools could be anything from an algorithm, to a program, to the infrastructure that houses a particular suite of software tools. 鈥淎 lot of times in science, you can鈥檛 just ask a question and use a tool that comes out of the box,鈥� says Noah. As a result, he has made it his team鈥檚 mission to be a collaborative hub at the Danforth Center that creates tools that help bridge different areas of expertise.

I am an environmental microbiologist who studies microbial communities in diverse ecosystems. Microbes (Bacteria and Archaea) are ubiquitous in the environment and play essential roles in the cycling of elements. These environmental microbes are capable of catalyzing a wide array of chemical reactions, many of which may have industrial applications. I study how complex microbial communities can cooperate to perform functions of industrial interest. The majority of microbes in the environment are difficult to grow in the lab. Furthermore, many industrially-relevant pathways are found in microbes not yet grown in the lab. I seek to employ both culture-based and culture-independent methods to understand how these microbial communities respond to anthropogenic activity and environmental change and how we might leverage these microbes for a biotechnological application. In the past, I have investigated how microbes from hot springs and geothermal vents could be used for biofuel production. Most recently, I have focused on microbial communities that respond to and aid in the clean up of crude oil contamination. I am also interested in engineering environmental microbes and microbial communities for enhanced biofuel production. I employ a combination of geochemical techniques, next-generation sequencing and other 'omics approaches, with microbial physiology and biochemistry to better understand these microbial systems.

Research Interests
Environmental Microbiology
Next-generation sequencing technology and bioinformatics/computational biology
Microbial physiology and biochemistry
Microbes as sensors for the environmental impacts of oil and gas production
Microbially-mediated remediation of crude oil contamination
Sustainability and plastic biodegradation
Links
Lab Webpage
Google Scholar Profile
ResearchGate Profile

Biotechnology; bioengineering; chemical engineering; metabolic engineering; systems biology; synthetic biology; computational biology; bioinformatics; cheminformatics; functional genomics; mathematical modeling; optimization; anaerobic microbiology; and environmental microbiology.

Trained as a bioengineer, Dr. Islam鈥檚 research focuses on the design, re-design, and implementation of biological processes to tackle important societal challenges, including the bioproduction of 鈥榞reen鈥� petrochemicals from gases, mitigating nutrient pollution from the environment, and developing novel chemotherapies for cancer treatment. He uses both computational and experimental approaches to engineer 鈥榗ellular metabolism,鈥� namely bioprocesses, to achieve the research objectives.

Dr. Tal Einav’s accomplishments included the development of sophisticated computational methods to understand viral behavior and predict how individuals react to vaccination or infection. This research earned Einav a prestigious Damon Runyon Quantitative Biology Fellowship and emphasized the importance of pursuing machine learning to analyze big data in immunology.
“We have these tremendous datasets that we’re just barely tapping into,” says Einav. These data allow Einav to understand the immune response in different contexts, from the young to the elderly, from healthy people to individuals who are immunocompromised. All with the goal to discover key patterns that let us understand and harness our immunity. Einav’s work has already demonstrated that blending biophysics and computer science enables researchers to predict the antibody response against new viral variants.
This work paves the way for a fundamentally new form of personalized medicine. For example, Einav imagines tailoring an individualized vaccine strain or dosage based on a patient’s specific antibody repertoire to create a stronger response that lasts for years, if not their entire life.

Dr. Daniel Llano is a professor in the  at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology’s Neurotechnology for Memory and Cognition Group. He is also a physician-surgeon at Carle Illinois College of Medicine. His field of professional interest is systems neuroscience.
 studies the mechanisms by which complex sounds like speech are processed by the auditory system. He hypothesizes that the auditory system generates internal models of the sensory world and uses these models to extract meaning from complex sensory stimuli. One potential neuronal substrate for this generative model is the massive system of descending projections from the auditory cortex to virtually every level of the subcortical auditory system. These projections are critical for shaping the response properties of neurons in the auditory periphery, but very little is known about their functional organization. 

He employs electrophysiological, novel optical, and advanced anatomical approaches to study the projections from the auditory cortex to subcortical structures. One specific set of issues concerns the role of different cortical subnetworks in complex sound processing. For example, neurons in both cortical layer 5 and cortical layer 6 project to subcortical structures, and the neurons in these layers have very different intrinsic, integrative and synaptic properties. Llano's work explores the different roles that these groups of neurons play in processing complex sound. 

Llano also has a strong interest in studying the reorganization of such networks during neuronal disease. In particular, his lab is developing models of stroke and age-related auditory network dysfunction for the development of novel therapeutic approaches.
His patient care work is focused on aging and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
Research interests:


Computational biology




Imaging


Neurobiology


Optogenetics


Sensory processing


Aging-related diseases


Neurological and behavioral disorders


Education


M.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


Ph.D., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

 explores molecular diversity and how molecular structure determines biological function in plants, animals, fungi, and microbes of significance to agriculture. He studies the origin, structure, and evolution of genomes, proteomes, RNomes, and functionomes for applications including bioengineering, biomedicine, and systems biology.
More information: 
Caetano-Anollés' atelier of evolutionary bioinformatics and plant bioinformation focuses on creative ways to mine, visualize and integrate data from structural and functional genomic research. His group is particularly interested in the evolution of macromolecular structure and networks in biology, the reconstruction of evolutionary history, the incorporation of evolutionary considerations in genomic research, the study of levels and patterns of genome-wide mutation, and processes that are linked to co-evolutionary phenomena (such as plant pathogenesis and symbiosis). In particular, his research has been productive in two specific areas, the evolution of the structure of macromolecules and the molecular basis of biodiversity.
Affiliations: 
Caetano-Anollés is a professor of bioinformatics in the  in the  (ACES) and health innovation professor in the  at the . He is also a faculty affiliate in the .

Lajos Pusztai, MD, DPhil, is a medical oncologist who specializes in breast cancer. He is the co-director of the Genomics, Genetics, and Epigenetics Program at the Yale Cancer Center.
He says he enjoys the delicate work of helping patients overcome the fear and shock of a breast cancer diagnosis. “I ensure that they maximize their chance of cure through the best available treatments,” he says. “I also love the research component of my job, to push the boundaries of existing knowledge and developing new therapies.”
Dr. Pusztai says he gravitated to medical oncology at the beginning of his career because of an inspiring mentor, and that the best part of his job is seeing patients remain disease-free for years and continuing with their life.
He is chair of the Breast Cancer Research Committee of the South West Oncology Group (SWOG), a global cancer research community that designs and conducts publicly funded clinical trials. His research group has made important contributions to establish that estrogen receptor-positive and-negative breast cancers have fundamentally different molecular, clinical, and epidemiological characteristics.
He has been a pioneer in evaluating gene expression profiling as a diagnostic technology to predict chemotherapy and endocrine therapy sensitivity and has shown that different biological processes are involved in determining the prognosis and treatment response in different breast cancer subtypes. Dr. Pusztai is also the principal investigator of several clinical trials investigating new drugs, including immunotherapies for breast cancer.