We are always looking for speakers for the TOG Seminar Series. If you are interested in presenting or if you have any questions about presenting in the seminar series, email us at traineeomicsgroup@gmail.com or sign-up at our website https://www.bcchr.ca/tog/tog-events/seminars.
View our upcoming seminars schedule on our GitHub!
The TOG monthly Seminar Series is a great opportunity for everyone to present their data, get feedback and network with fellow trainees and faculty!
If you are interested in presenting (this can be work-in-progress (WIP), practice for an upcoming conference, exit seminar, …), email us at tog@bcchr.ca!
March 2, 2023
Come enjoy coffee at room CFRI 3113 (Zoom option available) while listening to an exciting talk by Dorothy Lin on March 2nd, 2023 from 12 pm. All attendees stand a chance to win a customized TOG MERCH as there would be a raffle draw!
Topic: TOG Seminar Series
Time: March 2, 2023 12:00 PM Vancouver
Location: Room CFRI 3113
Join Zoom Meeting: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/69510327379?pwd=eFJrZTRKVzNiRjIyV2xzczJBK2pVdz09
Meeting ID: 695 1032 7379
Passcode: 924338
Speaker: Dorothy Lin
Title: Prenatal exposure to bisphenols and phthalates and infant gestational epigenetic age
Abstract: Bisphenols and phthalates are ubiquitously used plasticizers that are commonly found in consumer products. Importantly, these chemicals are endocrine disrupting chemicals, meaning that they disrupt the natural activities of hormones. Prenatal exposure to biphenols and phthalates have been shown to disrupt infant development and affect neurodevelopment, growth, immune development, behaviour, and sexual development. Moreover, as bisphenols are primarily estrogenic and phthalates are primarily anti-androgenic, their effects differ between sexes. Gestational epigenetic age is a biological measure of age that is based on the methylation levels of select CpGs in the genome, and it has been demonstrated to be associated with growth and development in infants. In this sex-stratified analysis, the association of epigenetic age in cord blood and maternal urinary levels of bisphenols and phthalates will be investigated in the Barwon Infant Study (BIS) cohort.
January 26, 2023
Access to the session recording now available here! Passcode: 8Xvbk=&Z
TOG is excited to announce our January 2023 TOG Seminar Series. We will be having our first hybrid session this year and please ensure to RSVP if you will be attending in person for food arrangements.
Please, find attached the link to RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXeiKCCUNoqo4kWvUMuGPSejkPs6_…
You can also join the seminar via Zoom on January 26, 2023, at 12 PM PST.
Topic: TOG Seminar Series
Time: January 26, 2023 12:00 PM Vancouver
Location: Room CFRI 3113, BCCHR
Join Zoom Meeting
https://ubc.zoom.us/j/8505347738?pwd=aGFpekRFMEpFMVhwSjVYQTJITmdGUT09
Meeting ID: 850 534 7738
Passcode: 295201
First Speaker: Dr. Meingold Chan
Talk Title: Differential DNA methylation associated with cumulative family adversity in children
Bio: Dr. Meingold Chan received undergraduate degree in Social Sciences, majoring in Psychology and Counselling, from the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Meingold Chan also received Master of Philosophy in Social and Developmental Psychology from the University of Cambridge, working with Prof. Claire Hughes. Meingold completed PhD in Human Development and Family Science at The Ohio State University, working with Dr. Xin Feng. Meingold’s doctoral work focused on cultural differences in emotion socialization and preschoolers’ socioemotional development across China (Beijing and Hong Kong) and the United States. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Kobor lab, Meingold is currently expanding research to examine the effect of early social experience on children’s mental health outcomes through the changes in DNA methylation and epigenetic aging with a specific focus on the consideration of race/ethnicity and culture
Second Speaker: Dr. Gabriela Cohen Freue
Talk Title: A misused (and misleading) correlation analysis
Talk Abstract: Prediction of protein levels from mRNA levels has long been fraught with unreliability and lack of precision. However, it has been claimed that using estimated gene-specific translation rates together with mRNA levels accurately predicts protein levels in any given tissue, reporting large correlations between predictions and measurements across genes (e.g., Wilhelm et al., Nature 2014; Edfors et al., Mol. Syst. Biol. 2016). We show that these correlations greatly overestimate the accuracy of per-gene predictions (Fortelny et al., Nature 2017). Using simple and standard statistical evaluation methods, we demonstrate that the gene-specific protein prediction can not be evaluated across genes. We show alternative appropriate approaches to evaluate per-gene prediction methods of protein from mRNA levels.
Bio: Gabriela Cohen Freue has completed her Ph.D in Statistics from the University of Maryland at Collage Park and postdoctoral studies in Biostatistics through her participation in the Biomarkers in Transplantation initiative and PROOF Centre of Excellence, UBC, where she led the statistical analysis of proteomics data. She was hired at UBC as Canada Research Chair-II in Statistical Proteomics and is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics. Her research program is focused on the development of rigorous statistical methodologies to identify molecular biomarkers of diseases from complex high-dimensional datasets, with special interest in robust estimation and regularization of generalized linear models. Dr Cohen has pioneered three main Data Science advancements at UBC: the Data Science Institute, the Master of Data Science, and the Data Science Minor.
November 25, 2022
TOG is excited to announce that we would be having an AI-expert faculty speaker in collaboration with Databinge for this month's TOG Seminar Series. This month’s seminar will be held virtually. You can join the seminar via Zoom on November 25, 2022, at 12:30 PM PST. Details are available below:
Topic: TOG Seminar Series (November)- Faculty Speaker
Zoom Link: https://ubc.zoom.us/j/168788388?pwd=UGhGdFN2THB0empjRlVRUGs1b3MvZz09
Meeting ID: 168 788 388
Passcode: 778293
Time: November 25, 2022, 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM Vancouver
Speaker: Dr. Jeff Clune
Talk Title: AI Neuroscience: How much do deep neural networks understand about the images they classify?
Bio: Dr. Jeff Clune is an Associate Professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia and a faculty member at the Vector Institute. Jeff focuses on deep learning, including deep reinforcement learning. Previously he was a research manager at OpenAI, a Senior Research Manager and founding member of Uber AI Labs (formed after Uber acquired a startup he helped lead), the Harris Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Wyoming, and a Research Scientist at Cornell University. He received degrees from Michigan State University (PhD, master’s) and the University of Michigan (bachelor’s). More on Jeff’s research can be found at JeffClune.com or on Twitter (@jeffclune).
Since 2015, he won the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House, had two papers in Nature and one in PNAS, won an NSF CAREER award, received Outstanding Paper of the Decade and Distinguished Young Investigator awards, and had best paper awards, oral presentations, and invited talks at the top machine learning conferences (NeurIPS, CVPR, ICLR, and ICML). His research is regularly covered in the press, including the New York Times, NPR, NBC, Wired, the BBC, the Economist, Science, Nature, National Geographic, the Atlantic, and the New Scientist.
