Applying Bioinformatics Skills in Translational Research

 

Join us for our live webinar on “Applying Bioinformatics Skills in Translational Research”, on Tuesday 8 November 2022 at 18.00 (EET).
The event will allow participants to get familiar with the scientific fields of bioinformatics and computational biology and their implementation in current translational research.

Speakers:
– Natalia Rivera | Assistant professor, Karolinska Institutet
– Ioannis Michalopoulos | Staff Research Scientist (Associate Professor Level), Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens (BRFAA)

Register here.

Prof. Rivera’s presentation will be delivered in English and Dr. Michalopoulos’ presentation in Greek.

Speakers’ Bio:

Natalia Rivera is a human geneticist, with a background in electrical engineering, and her research focuses on the genetics and epigenetics of sarcoidosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Her research endeavors to study disease molecular mechanisms from a broad angle with high-throughput genomic data coupled with clinical and environmental / lifestyle data. Chiefly, she carries out research investigations in multiple population-based cohorts through the MESARGEN consortium to unravel molecular factors implicated in disease pathogenesis and identify clinical biomarkers across populations. Her research group focuses on genomic investigations of sarcoidosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Their vision is to decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying disease pathogenesis and chronic inflammation implicated in autoimmunity. Their work is mainly data-driven with high-throughput genomic data compounded with statistical genetics, bioinformatics, and cutting-edge statistical approaches.

Ioannis Michalopoulos received his B.Sc. in Biology from the University of Athens and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of St Andrews. Soon after the publication of the first draft of the human genome, he moved to Bioinformatics, doing post-doctoral research in the University of Leeds (2001-2005) and in the Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens (2006-2008). Since 2008, he has been working as a Staff Research Scientist – Associate Professor Level in the Centre of Systems Biology of the Biomedical Research Foundation. He is in charge of the design and maintenance of various biobank web sites (Hellenic Cord Blood Bank, Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI-GR), Hellenic Biobank for Parkinson Disease, etc). His research activities include many collaboration projects with experimental researchers and computer scientists in the field of Genomics, Transcriptomics, Epigenomics, Proteomics, etc. His interests include de novo genome assembly, gene discovery and genome annotation, differential gene expression and coexpression, construction of gene networks, differential DNA methylation, transcription factor binding site prediction, miRNA target discovery, structural bioinformatics, phylogenomics, radiogenomics, cytogenetics and pharmacogenomics. He is an expert on Linux operating system administration, Apache2 web server configuration, MySQL database management and PHP and C programming. As a web developer, he has developed many interactive bioinformatics tools. He teaches Bioinformatics, Microarray Data Analysis and Research Methodology in MSc courses such as Bioinformatics, System Biology, Molecular Medicine, Dietetics and Nutrition, etc. Ioannis Michalopoulos is a founding member of the Hellenic Society of Computation Biology and Bioinformatics (HSCBB) of which he was a Treasurer (2013-17) and an Associate Member of the World Academy of Sciences. He has co-organised many national and international conferences. He is a reviewer of Nucleic Acids Research, Bioinformatics, Database, Journal of Oral Pathology and Medicine, Breast Cancer Research, PLoS One, BMC Bioinformatics, etc.