When: Tuesday, May 16, 2023, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PMWhere: Arts Two Lecture Theatre , Mile End
Speaker: Professor Maik Pietzner, Chair for Health Data Modelling
“From molecules to health records: finding new treatments for ‘understudied’ diseases”
Many diseases, including common and major contributors to patient burden and healthcare costs, are underrepresented in biomedical research - partly due to a lack of data. Maik will outline how genomic data from hundreds of thousands of people can be used to identify novel genes, proteins, or metabolites and more broadly pathways that increase the susceptibility to diverse diseases. He will illuminate how molecular data from diverse cohorts can be integrated and how this can be used to identify new drug targets or repurpose existing drugs.
Speaker BioAs the newly appointed Chair for Health Data Modelling, Maik has a keen interest in the computational integration of different health data modalities to translate (big) data into better health for patients, with a particular focus on underrepresented diseases and patient groups.
Maik co-leads the group for Computational Medicine at the Berlin Institute of Health, Germany, with a focus on the discovery of genetic variants that predispose to common, understudied diseases and can identify novel drug targets or opportunities to repurpose already existing drugs.
This work is a natural extension of his previous role with the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge at which he led multiple genetic discovery efforts for molecular entities at population scale, most importantly proteomics and metabolomics. Maik has an outstanding track record with publications in Science and the Nature family receiving over 3000 citations. He obtained his PhD with distinction from the University of Greifswald, Germany, in 2017 where he also studied biomathematics.
The new chair of health data modelling is part of the Centre of Healthcare Data and Advanced Analytics at the new Precision Healthcare University Research Institute (PHURI), established in September 2022. PHURI’s multidisciplinary research spans all QMUL faculties with the aim to deliver precision healthcare to better understand and manage diseases in our diverse East London community and beyond.