[postponed] BIFOLD Colloquium "Storing and Analyzing Viral Sequences through Data-driven Genomic Computing" (Prof. Stefano Ceri, Politecnico di Milano)

Event will be postponed!

BIFOLD Colloquium: "Storing and Analyzing Viral Sequences through Data-driven Genomic Computing - What you always wanted to know about the COVID-19 virus and never dared to ask " by Prof. Stefano Ceri, Politecnico di Milano

Abstract:
In the first part of the seminar, Prof. Ceri will give a simple and data-inspired illustration of what is a viral sequence, what are mutations, how mutated sequences become organized forming a “variant”, what are the effects of individual mutations and of variants. Then, Prof. Ceri will illustrate the process of deposition of viral sequences to public repositories (GenBank, COGUK, GISAID). In the second part of the seminar, Prof. Ceri will discuss the systems that were developed within his group, thanks to ERC and EIT funding. Specifically, he will illustrate (i)ViruSurf, a search system enabling free meta-data driven search over the integrated and curated databases, now hitting about 3 million SARS-CoV-2 sequences, continuously updated from the above repositories; (ii)VirusViz, a data visualization tool for comparatively analyzing query results; (iii)VirusLab, a tool for exploring user-provided viral sequences; (iv) EpiSurf, a tool for intersecting viral sequences with epitopes - used in vaccine design. Prof. Ceri will also hint at ongoing projects for viral surveillance and for exploring a knowledge base of viral resources.

Log-in information:
If you are interested in participating, please contact coordination@bifold.berlin.

Stefano Ceri is a professor of Data Management at Politecnico di Milano. His main research interests are extending data management and then acting as data scientists in numerous domains - including social analytics, fake news detection, genomics for biology and for precision medicine, and recently studies concerning the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome. He is the recipient of two ERC AdG, “Search Computing” (2008-2013) and “data-driven Genomic Computing” (2016-2021). He received the ACM-SIGMOD "Edward T. Codd Innovation Award" (June 2013). He is an ACM Fellow.