Benjamin F. Voight, PhD, spoke to researchers at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology as part of the Institute’s fall seminar series. Voight comes to the Institute by way of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Voight emphasized the importance of remaining clever and agile in the field of computational biology. He noted that the field is generating a massive quantity of data, so adjusting quickly and picking unique approaches when possible becomes increasingly important.
In particular, he talked about the work of his lab looking at identifying several sites in the human genome with a high likelihood of association to complex diseases. He also explained an exciting framework for testing the links between potential genetic risk factors and the suspected related health issues, including breast cancer. Finally, he went through how machines can learn to process genomic data on their own, in order to help sift through the mass of data being generated by the field of genomics in search of the genetic roots of complex traits.
This seminar was hosted by Sara Cooper, PhD.
More information on HudsonAlpha Research Seminars, including the upcoming schedule, can be found at hudsonalpha.org/seminars.
