The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Supervised and unsupervised methods have been used extensively to analyze genomics data, with mixed results. On one hand, new insights have led to new biological findings. On the other hand, analysis results were often not robust. Here we take a look at several such challenges from the perspectives of networks and big data. Specifically, we ask if and how the added information from a biological network helps in these challenges. We show both examples where the network added information is invaluable, and others where it is questionable. We also show that by collectively analyzing omic data across multiple studies of many diseases, robustness greatly improves. Short Bio: ========= Prof. Ron Shamir leads the Computational Genomics group at the Blavatnik School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University (TAU). He is the founder and head of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics at TAU and holds the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Chair in Bioinformatics. He develops algorithmic methods in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. His research interests include gene expression analysis, molecular networks, gene regulation and cancer genomics. Methods and software tools developed by Shamir's group are in use by hundreds of laboratories around the world. Shamir received a BSc in Mathematics and Physics from the Hebrew University, and a PhD in Operations Research from UC Berkeley in 1984. He is on the faculty of TAU since 1987. He has published some 270 scientific works, including 17 books and edited volumes, and has supervised more than 50 graduate students. He is on the editorial board of eleven scientific journals and series, and was on the steering committee of RECOMB. He co-founded the Israeli Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and was society president in 2004-2006. He is a recipient of the 2011 Landau Prize in Bioinformatics, and a Fellow of the ISCB and the ACM. ======================================= Refreshments will be served from 14:15 Lecture starts at 14:30