CV Raman Lecture | On some machine learning applications in biology

Abstract: Over the past few decades, major developments in the field of molecular biology coupled with advances in genomic technologies have led to an explosive growth in the amount of biological data generated by the scientific community. This has necessitated the use of computational methods for analyzing biological data in order to better understand the cellular processes and make discoveries. Applications of methods of machine learning naturally followed. In this talk we will start with a brief introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and the national strategy of AI for All. This will be followed by an overview of molecular biology and bioinformatics. Finally, applications of ML methods to three diverse areas in Computational Biology, namely microRNA target prediction, clustering of single cell RNA-seq data and drug design will be described.

Biography of the Speaker: Prof. Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay did her B Tech, M Tech and Ph. D. in Computer Science from Calcutta University, IIT Kharagpur and Indian Statistical Institute respectively. She then joined the Indian Statistical Institute as a faculty member, and became the Director in 2015. Since 2020 she is continuing in her second tenure as the Director of the Institute. Her research interests include computational biology, soft and evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence and machine learning.  She has authored/co-authored several books and numerous articles in journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings and has a citation h-index of 58. Prof. Bandyopadhyay has worked in many Institutes and Universities worldwide. She is the recipient of several awards including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Engineering Science, TWAS Prize, Infosys Prize, JC Bose Fellowship, Swarnajayanti fellowship, INAE Silver Jubilee award, INAE Woman Engineer of the Year award (academia), IIT Kharagpur Distinguished Alumni Award, Humboldt Fellowship from Germany, Senior Associateship of ICTP, Italy, young engineer/scientist awards from INSA, INAE and ISCA,  and Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma Gold Medal and Institute Silver from IIT, Kharagpur, India. She is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE), Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) and West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology. She was a member of the Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India (PM-STIAC) from 2018 to 2022. In March 2022, she has been conferred the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of the Government of India.

Location: Ahalia 18
Time: 2.15-3.15pm
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/jsV7PplkSQM