This year’s Southern California AI & Biomedicine Symposium is being held on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can register now for this free, annual event, organized by UCI’s Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics (IGB) in collaboration with the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS).

“Artificial intelligence increasingly plays a central role in all areas of science and technology,” says Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Pierre Baldi, who is organizing the symposium. “The IGB and its faculty members are spearheading new AI developments as well numerous applications of AI in the natural sciences, including in biology and medicine. The symposium provides an opportunity for the IGB community to come together [though the symposium is open to all] to hear the speakers discuss new problems, methods and results, and to socialize and brainstorm during the lunch and the afternoon reception about their research.”

The morning session will feature the following speakers:

• Professor Katrine Whiteson of the School of Biological Sciences, discussing the unique analytical challenges of microbiome data;
• Professor Bogi Andersen of the School of Medicine, discussing epidermal differentiation through single cell RNA sequencing; and
• Professor Arash Kheradvar of the Samueli School of Engineering, discussing synthetic medical imaging based on generative adversarial networks.

After lunch, the afternoon session will feature four distinguished IGB alumni, giving the following talks:

• “Leveraging Machine Learning in Biomedical Research Using DNAnexus Secure Cloud Platform,” by Daniel Quang of DNAnexus;
• “Recommender Algorithms for Medical Decision Making,” by Jonathan Chen of Stanford University;
• “Applying AI in Chemistry, Biology, and Medicine,” by Joshua Swamidass of Washington University Saint Louis; and
• “Deep Learning Methods for Predicting, Evaluating, and Refining Protein Complex Structures,” by Jianlin Cheng of the University of Missouri – Columbia.

This special alumni session is a first for the symposium. “Over the years, the IGB faculty and training programs have produced many alumni who are now faculty members in other universities or working in industry,” says Baldi. “The session will provide an opportunity to reconnect with and honor IGB’s alumni, letting them showcase their research, share their career paths, and interact with current UCI students and postdoctoral fellows.”

For more information, visit the event registration page.

— Shani Murray