Webinar: Social Network of Microbes in Microbiomes

Date/Time: Friday, April 9, 2021, 5:00pm IST (Indian Standard Time)

Speaker: Giri Narasimhan, Professor of Computer Science and Head of Bioinformatics Research Group (BioRG), Florida International University, USA

Recording available at: https://youtu.be/ilTyKIT6D2M

Abstract: Microbial communities or Microbiomes are ubiquitous and diverse. They live in specialized niches in the bodies of humans and animals, and out in the environment. Microbiomes display a complex set of beneficial and harmful interactions within the community and also with their environment, not unlike the characteristics of a human “social network”. More importantly, while our genomes are essentially static during our lifetimes, our microbiomes are constantly changing.

Microbiomes can be studied using next generation sequencing technologies. Analysis of the sequence data requires computational pipelines, which can help in understanding the composition of microbiomes and their diversity. The analysis can also help in identifying differentially abundant microbial taxa between two or more cohorts. This talk will discuss how computational methods can help in understanding complex relationships within the community, and even allow for inferring causal relationships and understanding dysbiosis. We will also discuss validation of some of the interactions in the laboratory.

Bio: Giri Narasimhan is a professor in the School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University where he heads the Bioinformatics Research Group (BioRG). He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, India and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. His research interests include the areas of Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, Data Mining, High Performance Computing, Information Retrieval, Algorithms and Theoretical Computer Science, Forensic Research, Public Health, Public Policy, Computational Finance and Statistics. His research has been funded by the NSF, NIH, NIJ, DoD, FDOH and private industry. He was the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering and Computing from 2009-15. He is the Director of the Academy for CS Education, an entity involved in K-12 teacher professional development. He is also the coordinator of the multidisciplinary Master’s degree program in Data Science. See https://users.cs.fiu.edu/~giri/, http://biorg.cs.fiu.edu/ and https://academy.cs.fiu.edu/ for more details.

Target Audience: This is for a wider audience. In particular, higher secondary and college students and teachers are welcome.

The webinar is done in a fireside chat format.

This webinar will be conducted over Zoom. The Zoom link will be available to registrants (sent to their email addresses) shortly before the webinar starts.

This webinar is part of SKC Science and Technology Webinar Series.