(Machine) Learnings from the Human Cell Atlas
Monday Jan 9, 2023 |Time 3:15pm
The 37 trillion cells of the human body have a remarkable array of specialised functions, and must cooperate and collaborate in time and space to construct a functioning human. Harnessing cutting edge single cell genomics, my lab has been attempting to understand this cellular diversity, how it is generated during development and how it goes wrong in disease. My talk will explore the importance of computational methods (including machine learning and artificial intelligence) in our work. This highlights how an exciting synergy between ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ science is driving new discoveries in the cellular composition and tissue microenvironments of the human body.
Dr Sarah Teichmann is a systems and genome biologist who heads the Cellular Genetics programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and is Director of Research at the Cavendish Lab/Dept Physics at the University of Cambridge. Sarah’s lab develops and applies cell atlas technologies to decipher human tissue architecture. She is particularly interested in how cellular diversity is generated in the immune system and through development. Sarah is co-founder and co-leader of the international Human Cell Atlas consortium, which aims to create reference maps for cells across all human tissues and has grown to include over two thousand members across the world. Sarah’s work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the EMBO Gold Medal, Genetics Society Mary Lyons Award and Biochemical Society GlaxoSmithKline Award among others. She is an EMBO Member, ISCB Fellow, and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Royal Society.