Organized by: School of Computing, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Dates: August 19-21, 2024
Location: 115 Avery Hall, City Campus
Registration page here.
Event Description
Advanced sequencing technologies have revolutionized biological and medical research, offering unprecedented insights into complex biological systems at all levels. However, the fast-evolving technologies and the wealth of data generated in modern omics poses significant challenges, requiring advanced bioinformatics expertise and sophisticated computational strategies for meaningful interpretation.
Recognizing the pressing need for interdisciplinary collaboration, our computational biology team, specializing in multi-omics and machine learning, has observed a growing demand from diverse fields including biology, medicine, and agriculture. This motivates us to organize a research forum and a training course designed for our UNL faculty and students.
The event, funded by EPSCoR, ORED, and SoC, will span three days and include a research symposium and a hands-on workshop.
Research Symposium (August 19, 2024)
The symposium will bring together the local bioinformatics community from our flagship state university as well as the medical center. Our audience will include computer scientists, bioinformaticians, statisticians, biologists and medical scientists. We aim to cover critical and broad topics in cutting-edge omics, machine learning, and their applications in basic sciences and biomedical research.
Agenda
08:30am-09:00am: Registration and Morning Coffee
09:00am-09:15am: Welcome
09:15am-10:15am: (Keynote) Dr. Jingyi Jessica Li (Professor, UCLA), "Using Synthetic Null Data to Enhance Statistical Rigor in Single-cell & Spatial Transcriptomics"
10:15am-10:30am: Coffee Break
10:30am-11:30pm: Internal talks
- Dr. Jai Patel, UNMC. “GAIN-BRCA: A Graphical Explainable AI-Net framework for BReast CAncer Subtype Classification”
- Dr. Meng Niu, UNMC. “A Glance on Multi-omics Data from Rhesus Monkey Brain”
11:30pm-1:00pm: Lunch
01:00pm-02:00pm: (Keynote) Dr. Fengzhu Sun (Professor, USC), "Statistical and Machine Learning Approaches for Investigating Viruses and Virus-host Interactions"
02:00pm-2:15pm: Coffee Break
02:15pm-03:15pm: Internal talks
- Dr. Hyun-Seob Song, UNL. “Multi-omics Integration for Advanced Metabolic and Biogeochemical Reaction Modeling”
- Drs. Massimiliano Pierobon, and Sasitharan Balasubramaniam. UNL. “Computing and Communications with Wetware: A New Frontier for Omics and Machine Learning”
03:15pm-03:30pm: Coffee Break
03:30pm-04:15pm: (Keynote) Dr. Fenglou Mao (Program officer, NIH), "NIH Data Science Resources and Programs to Support Life Science"
04:15pm-04:45pm: QA and Discussion
04:45pm-05:00pm: Closing Remarks
Hands-on Workshop (August 20-21, 2024)
The workshop will feature lectures and hands-on lab sessions for participants to gain valuable experience in cutting-edge techniques in emerging areas such as spatial single cell and meta-genomics and transcriptomics. The course will also facilitate application-specific discussions, fostering a collaborative learning environment. The workshop's learning objectives include understanding the principles behind modern omics technologies, addressing related challenges, becoming proficient in analytical workflows, and extracting meaningful insights from data and models.
Metagenomic Workshop (August 20, 2024)
Agenda
- 09:00am-09:30am: Account Setup
- 09:30am-10:00am: (Talk) Dr. Yanbin Yin, UNL. "Carbohydrate-active enzyme (CAZymes) annotation in microbiomes using dbCAN"
- 10:00am-12:00am: Introduction and data analysis demo
- 12:00Pm-01:00pm: Lunch
- 01:00pm-02:00pm: Analysis: data analysis demo
- 02:00pm-03:00pm: Review: understand your results
- 03:00pm-03:30pm: Additional topics
- 03:30pm-04:30pm: Q&A: Bring your own data
Single Cell Workshop (August 21, 2024)
- 09:00am-9:30am: Introduction
- 09:30am-10:00am: (Talk) Dr. Shibiao Wan, UNMC. “Analyzing Millions of Single Cells via SHARP”
- 10:00am-12:00pm: Introduction, Pipeline demo, and Hands-on Analysis (1)
- 12:00pm-01:00pm: Lunch
- 01:00pm-03:00pm: Hands-on Analysis (2)
- 03:00pm-03:30pm: Review
- 03:30pm-04:30pm: Q&A
Sponsors
Contacts
- Juan Cui, Ph.D. Associate Professor, School of Computing; Email: jcui@unl.edu
- Qiuming Yao, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, School of Computing; Email: qyao3@unl.edu