Maria Brbic

Prof. Maria Brbic, EPFL, School of Computer and Communication Sciences and School of Life Sciences, CH

Bridging AI and Single-cell Genomics: Towards AI-driven Discoveries

Recent advancements in single-cell technologies have enabled the generation of comprehensive datasets across various tissues, conditions and species. These developments present unprecedented opportunities for defining novel cell states and unraveling complex underlying cellular processes. In this talk, I will give an overview of challenges that arise when dealing with single-cell datasets and present machine learning methods designed to overcome these challenges. I will highlight the ability of these methods to bridge heterogeneity of single cell datasets by enabling analysis, annotation transfer and discovery of novel cell types across single-cell experiments. I will discuss the role these methods have for annotating comprehensive single-cell atlas datasets and outline promising directions for future research.

Biography

Maria Brbic (https://brbiclab.epfl.ch/) is is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and, by courtesy, of Life Sciences at EPFL. She is affiliated with the EPFL Center for Intelligent Systems (CIS) and EPFL Institute of Bioengineering (IBI). Prior to joining EPFL, Maria was a postdoctoral researcher in Computer Science at Stanford University working with Jure Leskovec and was a member of  the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub at Stanford.  She received her PhD degree from University of Zagreb in 2019, while also researching at Stanford University and University of Tokyo. Her research was awarded with the Fulbright Scholarship, L’Oreal UNESCO for Women in Science Scholarship, Branimir Jernej award for outstanding publication in biology and biomedicine, and Josip Loncar Silver Plaque award for the best doctoral dissertation. She has been named a Rising Star in EECS by MIT in 2021. Her research is focused on developing new machine learning methods and applying her methods to advance biomedical research.