Bioinformatics and AI February
Monthly Bioinformatics and AI Seminar. Each seminar has three short talks of 20 minutes, including questions and discussions.
Practical information:
Leertraject
Georganiseerd door:
- Evolutionary and Computational/Clinical Virology - Philippe Lemey, Annemie Vandamme + Guy Baele
- Laboratory of Bioinformatics and (Eco)-Systems Biology - Jeroen Raes
- Leuven.AI
Teachers / speakers
Philippe Lemey is an Associate Professor at the Rega Institute, University of Leuven. His research interests lie in the fields of molecular epidemiology, computational biology and viral evolution. In particular, he has studied the evolutionary processes that shape viral genetic diversity, spanning from large-scale epidemic processes, such as population growth and spatial dispersal, to small-scale transmission histories and within-host evolutionary processes. Specific applications include the origin and epidemiology of HIV, the source-sink dynamics of seasonal influenza, rabies metapopulation dynamics, and viral outbreaks such as Ebola and Lassa virus. Philippe is the lead author of the second edition of the Phylogenetic Handbook and a two-time ERC grant awardee. His team has made important contributions to the popular BEAST software, which was acknowledged by the Mitchell prize in Bayesian statistics.
Prof Dr Anne-Mieke Vandamme was trained as biochemist, and holds a PhD in sciences since 1986. She joined the Rega Institute at the University of Leuven in 1990, where she started a unit on virus genetic testing for clinical and epidemiological purposes. She co-founded a new division, Clinical and Epidemiological Virology; and co-started the “Institute of the future”, a transdisciplinary research incubator. She is member of the Superior Health Council of the Belgian government and of the WHO ad-hoc advisory group on COVID-19.
Prof. Baele is a computational biologist, who is an expert in Bayesian statistics and algorithm design. He has made significant contribution to the BEAST program that allow robust analysis of various evolutionary models.
Jeroen Raes is ambassadeur van de Vraag voor de Wetenschap, een initiatief van het FWO (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek in Vlaanderen). Daarnaast is hij bio-informaticus en verbonden aan de Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) en het Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB). Hij onderzoekt het verband tussen onze darmbacteriën en onze gezondheid. Hij ontdekte samen met een internationaal consortium dat de mensheid te verdelen valt in 3 types naargelang zijn darmflora, ongeacht ras of eetgewoonten. De types zijn vergelijkbaar met de verschillende bloedgroepen in de wereld. De gerespecteerde bladen Nature en Science schreven over zijn bevindingen. Zijn ultieme doel is om ziekten gerelateerd aan een verstoring in de darmflora, zoals kanker, auto-immuunziekten en bepaalde infecties, beter te begrijpen en misschien zelfs te behandelen. Om deze reden richtte Raes het Vlaams Darmflora-Project op.
