Machine Learning for Genomic Medicine - (from 28/01/2019 to 06/02/2019)

Length : 15 hours - 3 cfu

Abstract 

Genomic medicine, known also as Precision Medicine, promises a revolution in the diagnosis and therapy of human diseases, by providing a personalized approach targeted to the specific genotypic and phenotypic portrait of each patient. To this end a multi-disciplinary research, at the cutting edge between Medicine, Biotechnology and Computer Science is needed.

In this course we focus on advanced machine learning methods for the detection of genetic variants in both coding and non coding regions of the human genome, responsible for or associated with Mendelian or complex genetic diseases, as well as with other complex diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders and cancer.

The course introduces the basics of Molecular Biology needed to understand genetic variations and their interplay with mutations causative of human diseases, and the basics of high-throughput biotechnologies and genomic annotations that enable the analysis of genetic variants in the human genome using Machine Learning methods for Precision Medicine.

The main Machine Learning approaches very recently proposed in literature, ranging from ensembles or hyper-esenmbles of learning machines to deep neural network learning techniques, are analyzed and discussed, showing the main results, open problems and future research directions of this challenging multi-disciplinary research field.

Data & Venue

Lecturer

Prof. Giorgio Valentini- Dr. Matteo Re'

Assessor

Prof. Giorgio Valentini