Please join us for a live webinar on the 6th May 15.00–16.00 at which Professor Axel Behrens (Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre Scientific Director) is pleased to host Professor Mauricio Barahona and Professor Nick Jones. 

Professor Mauricio Barahona – Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

Graph-based learning for high-dimensional data analysis in biomedicine

&

Professor Nick Jones – Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

Single cells, mitochondria, tumour gene therapies and health behaviour

 

In this series of webinars brought to you by the Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre at Imperial College London and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, researchers across the two organisations will discuss key challenges facing cancer research and opportunities for new convergence science approaches to address these. Join us to consider how novel approaches and technologies could shed light on unresolved problems in cancer biology, to innovate new ways to address challenges in cancer and bring pioneering treatments to cancer patients faster.  

 

Registration

 

To receive information about how to access this event please email icr-imperial-convergence.centre@imperial.ac.uk

 

Please note: This webinar is exclusively available only to colleagues across the Institute of Cancer Research, Imperial College London, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Imperial College Healthcare. 

 

About the speakers and presentations: 

 

Professor Mauricio Barahona

 

Mauricio Barahona is Chair in Biomathematics in the Department of Mathematics at Imperial and is the Director of the EPSRC Centre for Mathematics of Precision Healthcare. His research is on applied mathematics in biological, social and engineering systems using methods from graph theory, dynamical systems, stohastic processes, optimisation and machine learning.

 

This talk will present an overview of a series of mathematical and computational approaches for the analysis of high-dimensional data of relevance in biomedical research. Such data are prevalent and span from structures of biomolecules, to 'omic cellular profiles, to images, to text. The methods combine tools from manifold learning, geometric dimensionality reduction, stochastic processes and graph theory to extract interpretable descriptions in terms of a small set of reduced variables. Professor Barahona will provide a quick summary of the ideas with several illustrations to applications to different areas.

Professor Nick Jones

 

Nick Jones is Professor of Mathematical Sciences in the Department of Mathematics at Imperial and is part of the Imperial Biomathematics group and the Centre for the Mathematics of Precision Healthcare. His work spans topics in applied stochastic processes, simulation-based inference, and network theory.

 

In this talk Professor Jones will highlight the tools and techniques that he uses in his research group. His principal interests are in the study of mtDNA mutation and ageing related diseases, and in the interplay between social structure and socially networked health behaviour. MtDNA mutations can be specific biomarkers and biotargets for cancer therapeutics. Professor Jones will outline his group's efforts to develop gene-therapies that seek to eliminate mtDNA from tumours. He will also further mention his groups larger efforts of using single-cell transcriptomics to study how mtDNA mutations expand. Finally, he will discuss his groups work on public health: identifying the role of inequalities in shaping behaviours like vaccination and designing strategies to influence health behaviour.