Jeffrey Regier received a PhD in statistics from UC Berkeley (2016) and joined the University of Michigan as an assistant professor. His research interests include graphical models, Bayesian inference, high-performance computing, deep learning, astronomy, and genomics.
The long temporal and large spatial scales of ecological systems make controlled experimentation difficult and the amassing of informative data challenging and expensive. The resulting sparsity and noise are major impediments to scientific progress in ecology, which therefore depends on efficient use of data. In this context, it has in recent years been recognized that the onetime playthings of theoretical ecologists, mathematical models of ecological processes, are no longer exclusively the stuff of thought experiments, but have great utility in the context of causal inference. Specifically, because they embody scientific questions about ecological processes in sharpest form—making precise, quantitative, testable predictions—the rigorous confrontation of process-based models with data accelerates the development of ecological understanding. This is the central premise of my research program and the common thread of the work that goes on in my laboratory.
Dr. Bai’s research interests lie in development and refinement of bioinformatics algorithms/software and databases on next-generation sequencing (NGS data), development of statistical model for solving biological problems, bioinformatics analysis of clinical data, as well as other topics including, but not limited to, uncovering disease genes and variants using informatics approaches, computational analysis of cis-regulation and comparative motif finding, large-scale genome annotation, comparative “omics”, and evolutionary genomics.
Dr. Veera Baladandayuthapani is currently a Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at University of Michigan (UM), where he is also the Associate Director of the Center for Cancer Biostatistics. He joined UM in Fall 2018 after spending 13 years in the Department of Biostatistics at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, where was a Professor and Institute Faculty Scholar and held adjunct appointments at Rice University, Texas A&M University and UT School of Public Health. His research interests are mainly in high-dimensional data modeling and Bayesian inference. This includes functional data analyses, Bayesian graphical models, Bayesian semi-/non-parametric models and Bayesian machine learning. These methods are motivated by large and complex datasets (a.k.a. Big Data) such as high-throughput genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics and proteomics as well as high-resolution neuro- and cancer- imaging. His work has been published in top statistical/biostatistical/bioinformatics and biomedical/oncology journals. He has also co-authored a book on Bayesian analysis of gene expression data. He currently holds multiple PI-level grants from NIH and NSF to develop innovative and advanced biostatistical and bioinformatics methods for big datasets in oncology. He has also served as the Director of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Cores for the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs) in Multiple Myeloma and Lung Cancer and Biostatistics&Bioinformatics platform leader for the Myeloma and Melanoma Moonshot Programs at MD Anderson. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for Journal of American Statistical Association, Biometrics and Sankhya.
An example of horizontal (across cancers) and vertical (across multiple molecular platforms) data integration. Image from Ha et al (Nature Scientific Reports, 2018; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-32682-x)
--.jpg)
I study how law shapes innovation in the life sciences, with a substantial focus on big data and artificial intelligence in medicine. I write about the intellectual property incentives and protections for data and AI algorithms, the privacy issues with wide-scale health- and health-related data collection, the medical malpractice implications of AI in medicine, and how FDA should regulate the use of medical AI.
My research is focused on developing efficient and effective statistical and computational methods for genetic and genomic studies. These studies often involve large-scale and high-dimensional data; examples include genome-wide association studies, epigenome-wide association studies, and various functional genomic sequencing studies such as bulk and single cell RNAseq, bisulfite sequencing, ChIPseq, ATACseq etc. Our method development is often application oriented and specifically targeted for practical applications of these large-scale genetic and genomic studies, thus is not restricted in a particular methodology area. Our previous and current methods include, but are not limited to, Bayesian methods, mixed effects models, factor analysis models, sparse regression models, deep learning algorithms, clustering algorithms, integrative methods, spatial statistics, and efficient computational algorithms. By developing novel analytic methods, I seek to extract important information from these data and to advance our understanding of the genetic basis of phenotypic variation for various human diseases and disease related quantitative traits.
A statistical method recently developed in our group aims to identify tissues that are relevant to diseases or disease related complex traits, through integrating tissue specific omics studies (e.g. ROADMAP project) with genome-wide association studies (GWASs). Heatmap displays the rank of 105 tissues (y-axis) in terms of their relevance for each of the 43 GWAS traits (x-axis) evaluated by our method. Traits are organized by hierarchical clustering. Tissues are organized into ten tissue groups.
The Schloss lab is broadly interested in beneficial and pathogenic host-microbiome interactions with the goal of improving our understanding of how the microbiome can be used to reach translational outcomes in the prevention, detection, and treatment of colorectal cancer, Crohn’s disease, and Clostridium difficile infection. To address these questions, we test traditional ecological theory in the microbial context using a systems biology approach. Specifically, the laboratory specializes in using studies involving human subjects and animal models to understand how biological diversity affects community function using a variety of culture-independent genomics techniques including sequencing 16S rRNA gene fragments, metagenomics, and metatranscriptomics. In addition, they use metabolomics to understand the functional role of the gut microbiota in states of health and disease. To support these efforts, they develop and apply bioinformatic tools to facilitate their analysis. Most notable is the development of the mothur software package (https://www.mothur.org), which is one of the most widely used tools for analyzing microbiome data and has been cited more than 7,300 times since it was initially published in 2009. The Schloss lab deftly merges the ability to collect data to answer important biological questions using cutting edge wet-lab techniques and computational tools to synthesize these data to answer their biological questions.
Given the explosion in microbiome research over the past 15 years, the Schloss lab has also stood at the center of a major effort to train interdisciplinary scientists in applying computational tools to study complex biological systems. These efforts have centered around developing reproducible research skills and applying modern data visualization techniques. An outgrowth of these efforts at the University of Michigan has been the institutionalization of The Carpentries organization on campus (https://carpentries.org), which specializes in peer-to-peer instruction of programming tools and techniques to foster better reproducibility and build a community of practitioners.
The Schloss lab uses computational tools to integrate multi-omics tools in a culture-independent approach to understand how bacteria interact with each other and their host to drive processes such as colorectal cancer and susceptibility to Clostridium difficile infections.
Dr. Lee’s research in data science concerns biological questions in systems biology and network medicine by developing algorithms and models through a combination of statistical/machine learning, information theory, and network theory applied to multi-dimensional large-scale data. His projects have covered genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics from yeast to mouse to human for integrative analysis of regulatory networks on multiple molecular levels, which also incorporates large-scale public databases such as GO for functional annotation, PDB for molecular structures, and PubChem and LINCS for drugs or small compounds. He previously carried out proteomics and metabolomics along with a computational derivation of dynamic protein complexes for IL-3 activation and cell cycle in murine pro-B cells (Lee et al., Cell Reports 2017), for which he developed integrative analytical tools using diverse approaches from machine learning and network theory. His ongoing interests in methodology include machine/deep learning and topological Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy-based network theory, which are applied to (1) multi-level dynamic regulatory networks in immune response, cell cycle, and cancer metabolism and (2) mass spectrometry-based omics data analysis.
Figure 1. Proteomics and metabolomics analysis of IL-3 activation and cell cycle (Lee et al., Cell Reports 2017). (A) Multi-omics abundance profiles of proteins, modules/complexes, intracellular metabolites, and extracellular metabolites over one cell cycle (from left to right columns) in response to IL-3 activation. Red for proteins/modules/intracellular metabolites up-regulation or extracellular metabolites release; Green for proteins/modules/intracellular metabolites down-regulation or extracellular metabolites uptake. (B) Functional module network identified from integrative analysis. Red nodes are proteins and white nodes are functional modules. Expression profile plots are shown for literature-validated functional modules. (C) Overall pathway map of IL-3 activation and cell cycle phenotypes. (D) IL-3 activation and cell cycle as a cancer model along with candidate protein and metabolite biomarkers. (E) Protein co-expression scale-free network. (F) Power-low degree distribution of the network E. (G) Protein entropy distribution by topological Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy calculated for the network E.
Samuel K Handelman, Ph.D., is Research Assistant Professor in the department of Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, of Michigan Medicine at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prof. Handelman is focused on multi-omics approaches to drive precision/personalized-therapy and to predict population-level differences in the effectiveness of interventions. He tends to favor regression-style and hierarchical-clustering approaches, partially because he has a background in both statistics and in cladistics. His scientific monomania is for compensatory mechanisms and trade-offs in evolution, but he has a principled reason to focus on translational medicine: real understanding of these mechanisms goes all the way into the clinic. Anything less that clinical translation indicates that we don’t understand what drove the genetics of human populations.
Yang Chen received her Ph.D. (2017) in Statistics from Harvard University and then joined the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor of Statistics and Research Assistant Professor at the Michigan Institute of Data Science (MIDAS). She received her B.A. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of China. Research interests include computational algorithms in statistical inference and applied statistics in the field of biology and astronomy.
ARC is a unit of Office of Research 
Copyright © 2017 The Regents of the University of Michigan
