BBB seminar: Marc Vaudel

Marc Vaudel
Department of Biomedicine, University of Bergen

Self-driving cars, programmable drones, smart phones… Our everyday life is rapidly changing with the integration of the innovations from information sciences. Some of these innovations made it to the biomedical and clinical fields through bioinformatics research, helping our understanding, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of diseases. One can for example cite the progress in image processing, where machine-learning algorithms have become more efficient in detecting tumors than trained humans. As a result, researchers benefit from unprecedented resources in handling large amounts of data, and automating fastidious tasks. However, this outstanding potential remains largely underexploited, and bioinformatics is often perceived as a source of problems more than solutions. Why such a discrepancy? Can we, together, alleviate this problem?

In this seminar some recent progress in information sciences will be introduced, e.g. in artificial intelligence and big data, and it will be shown how these can be applied to biomedical and clinical sciences. We will notably focus on the application of large-scale characterization of patient samples, so-called omics techniques, and see how the interpretation of large datasets can – or cannot – lead towards personalization of treatments. We will also see how integrating data from other heterogeneous sources can help guiding our assessment of such samples. Finally, we will consider the possibility of simulating in vivo and in vitro experiments, opening the way for pure in silico biomedical sciences.

The presentation will be followed by an open discussion on bioinformatics. We will try to identify the challenges in bioinformatics that researchers encounter on an everyday basis, and explore possible solutions. Whether you have questions, needs, expectations, or want to contribute with solutions, this seminar will provide a good opportunity for freely exchanging views on bioinformatics.

Chairperson: Harald Barsnes, Department of Clinical Science