Dr. Ortiz-Zuazaga has developed novel methods of measuring gene expression from microarray and second-generation sequencing data, and determining regulatory gene networks from this data. He already has established successful collaborations with scientists in biomedical research using Big Data, in this award, he will continue to grow these research collaborations, bringing his quantitative and algorithmic skills to bear on novel biomedical problems. Due to his experience in multiple fields, Dr. Ortiz-Zuazaga is uniquely qualified to abstract the basic algorithmic challenges in many biological problems, and can help translate biological questions into data analysis algorithms. Students in his lab will adapt probabilistic data structures to the task of detecting differential gene expression in de-novo RNA-seq experiments, and use these and other data sets to model gene regulatory networks using bioinformatic and statistical methods.
Dr. Ortiz-Zuazaga brings to the project extensive experience in computational biology, ranging from data analysis to modelling and simulation and visualization.