Data Science Meets Life Science: Some Success Stories

QUT Centre for Data Science Public Lecture
- Speaker: Professor Antonietta Mira, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland and University of Insubria, Italy

Abstract:
How can Data Science help improve our lives?

I will review some personal research success stories that range from analyzing gene expression, protein folding and fMRI data, to the study of optimal positioning of defibrillators, Great Barrier Reef biodiversity and COVID-19 data dynamics.

More in details, some genes are differentially expressed in patients when compared to controls. Identifying them is of paramount importance for diagnosis and for identifying possible treatments.

The Intrinsic Dimension (ID) is a novel methodology that allows the identification of differentially expressed genes and, at the same time, to quantify the uncertainty of the resulting nonlinear clustering of patients.

We have used the same methodology to study when a protein is in a folded versus unfolded state thus allowing to better understand its properties and functionality: failure to fold into a correct three-dimensional structure can produce inactive or even toxic proteins.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. By analyzing fMRI data using the ID we better understand when an area of the brain is in use because blood flow to that region increases.

Using statistical models, we design risk maps of out of hospital cardiac arrests and help with optimal positioning new defibrillators or relocating existing ones.

Finally, I will present two research lines joint with QUT Centre for Data Science on studying the evolution of biodiversity of the Great Barrier Reef and on clustering countries based on COVID-19 data dynamics.

All these examples share an interdisciplinary flavor and highlight the ability of complex dataset analyzed with the proper statistical tools to improve our understanding of the world, ultimately making our lives better in many ways.