Speakers: Rohita Sinha, PhD

Rohita Sinha, PhD

Director, Center of Excellence for Bioinformatics & AI
Eurofins Viracor

 

Rohita Sinha works for Eurofins-Viracor and currently leads their Center of Excellence for Bioinformatics & AI. Dr. Sinha has joined Viracor Eurofins in 2018 as a Senior Scientist, with the primary focus on developing novel computational protocols for a range of diagnostic assays to detect and monitor infections disease and solid organ transplant rejection. Prior to joining Viracor Eurofins, Dr. Sinha was a Research Asst. Professor at Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln where he extensively worked on application of next-generation sequencing to understand the complexity of the gut microbiota. Dr. Sinha is co-founder of a Bioinformatics startup (Metagenome Analytics, LLC), with the core business of developing computational methods to detect and subtype food pathogens. He has received his PhD (Bioinformatics) from the University of Kansas, Lawrence in 2011.

 

Clinical Data, If Not ‘Big Data’ is Certainly ‘Complex data.’ How Do We Manage It?

The biological system is a complex network of interactions that evolve during disease progression. This dynamic process leads to the generation of novel hypotheses for identifying disease-specific biomarkers and, ultimately, designing diagnostic assays. This paradigm yields impressive results when comparing control and disease states, but it requires extensive data analysis, particularly when developing diagnostic tests for organ transplant recipients. In these cases, the data is often compromised by small sample sizes, high heterogeneity, and class imbalance. In my talk, I will share some of our experiences in managing such complex data and the details behind a few of our diagnostic assays that predict ‘allograft rejection’.