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Genomics & Health Informatics

The mass generation of high-content genomic, imaging and digital data has brought rapid advances in our understanding of cell biology and human diseases, and offers promising avenues for the field of precision medicine. A major obstacle revolves around delivering meaningful information from these data, requiring the deployment of a variety of methods such as statistics, machine learning and data visualization in tight collaboration with clinicians.

The Genomics & Health Informatics Group was created in 2019 to develop statistical and machine-learning methods to integrate genomic, clinical, and imaging data. The group aims to accelerate the diagnosis and improve the understanding and treatment of complex diseases such as neuro-degenerative disorders in collaboration with clinical neuroscientists. The group has expertise in genomics, bioinformatics, RNA biology, neuroscience, data science, and data visualization.

The current lines of research include:

1) the integration of longitudinal cellular imaging with genomic data to study how molecular biology shapes cellular morphology in neuro-degenerative diseases;

2) the development of machine learning methods to integrate longitudinal digital data with genomics to study how individual differences in motor and cognitive behaviors emerge and how such differences may confer vulnerability to neurodegenerative diseases.

In collaborating with clinicians and expert laboratories in molecular neuroscience and bioengineering, the group has access to unique high quality data including longitudinal RNA-sequencing (Patani laboratory, Francis Crick Institute, London) and time-lapse cellular imaging (Serio lab, Kings College, London) from motor neuron cultures obtained from healthy and sick donors.

Group News

Idiap is accompanying university students thanks to research activities

institute — Mar 07, 2022

Three new students joined the Genomics & Health Informatics group at Idiap. Coming from universities in Paris and Lausanne, they chose Valais to improve their skills.

L'Idiap croit en la force des femmes en science

education — last modified Feb 08, 2022

A l'occasion de la Journée Internationale des Femmes et les Filles en Sciences, venez prendre part à l'évènement virtuel Potenti'Elles, une table ronde ouverte à toutes et tous qui réunira des femmes inspirantes.

Idiap is looking for its next director

institute — Jan 14, 2022

Idiap Research Institute and the School of Engineering at EPFL invite applications for the directorship of Idiap. The successful candidate will also hold a faculty position as full professor at EPFL School of Engineering.

Classifying neurons for a better understanding of Stephen Hawking's disease

research — Dec 01, 2021

Results from our Genomics & health informatics research group, in collaboration with the Francis Crick Institute in London, describe the use of a computational analysis method to classify images of healthy and affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) motor neurons. This new technological breakthrough allows a better understanding of the disease and provides guidance for lab research.

The first paper in Brain Pathology

research — last modified Feb 15, 2021

The first paper of the Genomics and Health Informatics group, co-lead with Rickie Patani and Andrea Serio from the Francis Crick Institute (London, UK) is live in Brain Pathology. We propose a method to automatically identify ALS pathological motor neurons at single-cell resolution from histopathological tissue sections.

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Group Job Openings

Our group is regularly posting job openings ranging from internships to researcher positions. To check the opportunities currently available or to submit a speculative applications use the link below.Our group is regularly posting job openings ranging from internships to researcher positions. To check the opportunities currently available or to submit a speculative applications use the link below.