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Speaker: Associate Professor Pavel Skums, Georgia State University
Date and Time: September 9, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Location: Scheller, Room 102
Host: CSE Assistant Professor Xiuwei Zhang
Title: Outbreaks, metastases and homomorphisms: inference of migration networks of heterogeneous genomic populations under structural constraints.
Abstract: Tracking spread of diseases is a fundamental problem that is essential for understanding mechanisms of morbidity and mortality, devising and implementing effective interventions and therapies. My talk is dedicated to two important instances of this problem: investigation of viral outbreaks and tracking of cancer metastases. In these cases, diseases spread is driven by migrations of highly diverse genomic populations of viral variants and cancer clones, respectively. The fundamental computational problem here is to infer migration networks from high-resolution snapshots of these populations produced by high-throughput and single cell sequencing. I will discuss computational, modelling and algorithmic challenges associated with this problem, and describe a framework that addresses them by integrating methods of phylogenetics, network science and graph theory. The talk will cover theoretical foundations, design of efficient algorithms and practical applications.
Bio: Dr. Pavel Skums is an Associate Professor at the Computer Science department of Georgia State University. His research interests include computational genomics, molecular epidemiology, study of emergence of complex behavior in biological systems, graph theory and optimization. His research has been supported by NSF and NIH. He is a recipient of the NSF Career Award, CDC Charles C. Shepard Science Award and GSU CAS Dean’s Early Career Award.
