Please join us for a special Biomedical Data Science Grand Rounds with Olga Vitek, PhD, Professor of Computer Sciences, Khoury College, Northeastern University on Thursday, November 19 at 12:00 p.m. via Zoom!

***Please plan to join the webinar by 11:45 a.m. in case there are connectivity issues.***

Talk title: "Statistical and machine learning tools for mass spectrometry-based proteomics”

Location: Zoom (please write to biomedical.data.science@dartmouth.edu to acquire Zoom access) 

Host: Jianjun Hua

Talk Summary
Mass spectrometry-based proteomics studies variation of protein abundance in biological mixtures. Modern proteomic workflows are quantitative, high-throughput, and unprecedented in the scope and size of the generated datasets. At the same time, their stochastic variation and uncertainty present interesting statistical and machine learning challenges.

This talk will illustrate the importance of statistics and machine learning in this field using three examples: (1) split-plot linear mixed effects models, to detect differentially abundant proteins from mass spectral features with unequal information content, (2) a kernel transformation and regularization for spatially-aware segmentation of mass spectrometry-based images, and (3) an active learning experimental design for inferring protein signaling networks. The examples demonstrate that statistical and machine learning methods are key to deriving accurate and interpretable biological insights.

Biography
Dr. Olga Vitek holds a PhD in Statistics from Purdue University. She is Professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, and was previously a faculty member and a University Faculty Scholar at Purdue. Her research explores synergies between statistics and machine learning, and mass spectrometry and systems biology. Statistical methods and open-source software (MSstats and Cardinal) developed in her lab are recognized with the Chan Zuckerberg Essential Open Source Software award, and are widely used in academia and industry. Dr. Vitek is a senior member of the International Society for Computational Biology, and an elected member of the Council of the International Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) and of the board of directors of USHUPO. She is a member of the editorial advisory board of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics and of the Journal of Proteome Research. More information about her work can be found at olga-vitek-lab.ccis.northeastern.edu.