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Professor Peter Tonellato was invited to membership of the APHA's Genomics Forum and Committee on Health Policy. Dr. Tonellato will participate in the development of the Genomics Forum long-term agenda, formulation of special projects and help organize the Forum's participation in the APHA Annual meeting such as that held November 6-10, 2010 in Denver, Colorado (http://www.apha.org/meetings/)
The Genomics Forum (GF) is an official component of the American Public Health Association. GF members represent a diverse collection of disciplines all conducting research and analysis in genetics and implications to public health. The GF members share a common interest in assuring that genomics is researched and applied responsibly for individual and community health. The Goals of the GF include:
- represent the public health community
- work within APHA Sections, SPIGS, Caucuses, and State Affiliates to promote workforce competency in genomics
- engage public health and healthcare communities and others in projects and activities that increase the awareness, knowledge, and stills of genetic services
- guide policy by proposing updates to existing APHA policies on genetics, genomics, and epigenetics, and creating new position statements and opportunities for advocacy.
The GF Healthcare Policy Workshop seeks to understand how healthcare policy impacts public health genomics, and brainstorms around how public policy and genomics can serve as vehicles for breaking down silos within the public health system. Project work will emphasize cross-working group collaborations and will explore federal legislative opportunities as well as written products that will identify models, analyze current systems, and propose strategies for the future. The Workgroup is currently studying the Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act legislation.
Kourosh as a physician and public health specialist has been always dedicated to providing quality care and improving the effectiveness of healthcare. Since joining the medical informatics PhD program, his complementary background injected valuable multidisciplinary perspective into his new research field of biomedical informatics. His interests in translational bioinformatics including translational medicine and bioinformatics focus on:
• Personalized medicine and preventative health care for individuals based on their specific medical, family, and genetic characteristics;
• Modeling and simulation techniques used to create actionable evidence-based knowledge to support clinical and public health decision-making, and to study the impact of that knowledge and decision-making on improving health outcomes and reducing disparities at both the individual and population levels.
He hopes to address the needs of rapidly evolving era of medical and genomic research which eventually enhance patient quality of care and especially public health through advancing the science of medicine and improving the effectiveness of healthcare.
Education
- Doctorate of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences
- Master of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences
- PhD Candidate in Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Chun-Yuan is an Assistant Scientist in the LPM, while working on his MA in Bioinformatics offered jointly by Marquette University and the Medical College of Wisconsin. In the lab, Chun-Yuan will be researching biomedical informatics/public health information and possibly gene-environment analysis career options.
Education
BA in Botany, National Taiwan University
MA in Bioinformatics, Marquette University/Medical College of Wisconsin (in progress)
PhD in Botany, University of Texas at Austin
Background
My research interest is in disease modeling through microarray analysis. After earning my doctorate degree in Botany, I had several years of post-doctorate experience in plant oral vaccine, and in Glaucoma gene therapy, through which I became fascinated by the complex relationship in gene regulation and disease, and decided to pursue a masters degree in Bioinformatics. I then went back to my home country (Taiwan), and worked as a core manager for a bioinformatics service core in Academia Sinica for one year, followed by an assistant-professorship in Bioinformatics at Chung Hua University for two years.
Rui Du
Current Projects
Cloud MeDIP-seq Analysis of Transgenerational Gene Alterations in Zebrafish due to MeHg Exposure
·Automatic Extraction of Biomarkers from Biomedical Literature Using Natural Language Processing Approaches.
Education
PhD student in Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (In Progress)
MA in Biological Science, University of South Dakota
BA in Bioengineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
BA in Business Administration, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Background
As an undergraduate, I had an internship at National Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests in China, and worked on the project of Rice Suspension Cell and its interaction with pathogens. After graduating, I joined the National Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology of Chinese Academy of Science, and Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Bio-resources in Yunnan University, working on projects related to the origination and evolution of domesticated animals and fish, especially the Phylogenetic Reconstruction of the goldfish.
After working on the project of exploring the roles of Ubiquilin in Huntington’s Disease transgentic and Knock-out mouse model in the University of South Dakota, I realized the limitations of traditional molecular techniques and approaches in finding potential cures or treatments of diseases. Therefore, I shifted my focus and pursued a PhD in medical informatics in University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, aiming to adopt interdisciplinary approaches in the big-data driven era, especially informatics technologies that could effectively integrate and utilize biomedical data, information, and knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem solving, decision making, and discovering novel treatments or diagnosis of diseases to improve human health. Currently, I am very interested in and working on the projects to automatically? discover the biomarkers for all diseases from biomedical literature and genomics, tailored to personalized medicine with machine learning and text mining approaches, by integrating genomic analysis tools in the galaxy platform and conducting cloud computation and analysis of genomics.
Publication
·Quaternary palaeoenvironmental oscillations drove the evolution of the Eurasian Carassius auratus complex (Cypriniformes, Cyprinidae ). Gao, Y., S.-Y. Wan, J. Luo, R.W. Murphy, R. Du, S.-F. Wu, C.-L. Zhu, Y. Li, A. D. Poyarkov, S. N. Nguyen, P.-T. Luan, and Y.-P. Zhang. Journal of Biogeography.
·Phylogenetic Reconstruction of the Fish Genus Carassius Based on the Mitochondrial Genes ND2, ND4, Cytb, COI and COII. Rui Du, Yun Gao, Yanqin Wang, Shuyan Wang, Jing Luo, Ya-ping Zhang. (In preparation and intended to submit to Molecular Phylogenetic Evolution).
·The Detection of Apoptosis in Rice Suspension Cell Which Interact with the Pathogen.2005, Undergraduate thesis, Harbin Institute of Technology.
·The Role of Venture Capital in the Establishment and Development of High Technique Firms. 2005, Undergraduate thesis, Harbin Institute of Technology.
Conferences
·AMIA 2012 Annual Symposium, 2012, Chicago.
·The 13th Yunnan Academic Annual Conference of Cell Biology, 2006, China.
Aurash A Mohaimani
Current Projects
·Water Quality Monitoring of Milwaukee Beaches for the Milwaukee Health Department (2012)
·Cloud MeDIP-seq Analysis of Transgenerational Gene Alterations in Zebrafish due to MeHg Exposure
·Bioinformatics Tools, Resources and Objectives to Comparative Functional Analysis of Zebrafish
Education
PhD student in Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (In Progress)
BS in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics, Illinois Institute of Technology (2011, Magna Cum Laude)
Background
My personal and professional aspirations lie in service to both local communities and society through diligent performance in bioinformatics and its related applications. I am knowledgeable in MySQL, PHP/Perl, HTML, and C++ and am comfortable with operating in Windows, MacOS, or Linux. I have had previous experience in molecular dynamics, particularly in usage of GROMACS.
Conferences
AMIA 2012 (Chicago)
Zeinab Salari Far
Current Projects
Zeinab Salari Far is a Masters student studying coordinated degrees in Health Care Informatics and Library and Information Sciences at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Education
MLIS, Master of Library and Information Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (In progress)
MS in Health Care Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (In progress)
BS in Health Care Administration, Tehran University of Medical Sciences
Background
Zeinab’s research interests are in meaningful use and comparative effectiveness analysis. She has lead installing and working with REDCap (Free, web-based electronic data capture tools to support clinical and research studies) in LPHGI.
Charles Joseph Murphy
Current Projects
Biomedical informatic analysis of RNA in the primary cells and tumors arising in conditional XRCC4 and p53 deficient mouse background. Collaborator: Dr. Catherine Yan’s lab, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Laboratory for Personalize Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Education
BS in Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Background
I am an undergraduate at UWM. I am applying for graduate programs in bioinformatics and related fields for fall 2013. Originally majoring in biology (having taken many of the required classes), I switched to mathematics.
I have had many research experiences as an undergraduate. I have been a member of LPHIG since spring 2011. I previously worked in a physics lab, immunology lab, and spent one fortuitous summer at the Laboratory for Personalized Medicine at Harvard Medical School. My 2nd and 3rd undergraduate years were occupied by my selection to UWM’s Undergraduate Research Fellowships in Aquatic Biology and Mathematics (UWM-UBM). The opportunity sparked my interest in bioinformatics and programming, which became so defining for my direction of work with Dr. Tonellato.
Kimberly Siegler
Current Project
·Breast Cancer and the Solution to the Modern Moroccan Female Risk
Education
BS in Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (In Progress)
Background
I am currently pursuing my undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. My career interests lie in biostatistics, in order to apply statistical techniques to studies in public health and research. I chose biostatistics because I have a strong interest in mathematics and I wanted to apply that interest to a useful and interesting field. Currently, I am assisting on a project that seeks to identify certain risk factors that may predispose women to breast cancer in the Moroccan population, and using those risk factors to develop an algorithm that can predict an individual’s risk. The main goal is offering high risk Moroccan women, who will be identified after the validation of the algorithm, access to pharmacologic prevention strategies and risk management guidelines.
Kaoutar Maghfour
Current Projects
·Breast Cancer and the Solution to the Modern Moroccan Female Risk
·Kaoutar Maghfour, Kimberly Siegler, Kourosh Ravvaz, Iman Meziane
Education
BS in Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (In Progress)
Background
I am a Project Assistant in LPHIG. My research interest is identifying breast cancer risk factors for different populations. I am currently working on a project that seeks to identify certain risk factors in women ofMoroccan population, and using those risk factors to develop an algorithm. My other interest is programming. My academic experience has expanded my programming skills and I have had first-hand experience handling projects, including creating, testing, and updating different tools that can be used in different software. This experience will help me pursue research and developing an algorithm for breast cancer risk factors in the Moroccan population.
Past Members
Peter J. Kos
Peter J. Kos is a doctoral student studying Medical Informatics in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. His major adviser is SPH Professor Peter J. Tonellato. Peter is also a member of UWM's affiliated Laboratory for Personalized Medicine and the Laboratory for Translational Bioinformatics in the Center for Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School.
Education
ME in Bioinformatics, University of Illinois at Chicago
MS in Applied Molecular Biology, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
Background
Peter is a genetic specialist with a background in clinical interpretation and analysis. He has a record of excellence in academic research and business for developing systems, processes and standards to meet the specialized needs of product development, research collaboration, consumers and customers.
Peter has lead design teams in developing and specifying consumer and clinical products, managed clinical research projects, provided clinical and strategic expertise in a start-up business environment, and participated in clinical-genetic research projects.
Emmanuel Asante-Asamani
Emmanuel is a Masters student in Industrial Mathematics at the Department of Mathematical Sciences (UWM). He is currently working with the Laboratory for Public Health Informatics and Genomics to develop a robust methodology for the creation of Bayesian Networks for clinical avatar creation.
Education
BS in Mathematics, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana
Background
Emmanuel is interested in applying his mathematical and computational skills to develop predictive and multi-scale models for biomedical, biological, behavioral, environmental and clinical research.He was involved in collaborative research in computational Neuroscience in Cardiff University Brain and Research Imaging Center as a research trainee. He worked as a teaching/research assistant at KNUST, Ghana and is currently working as a teaching assistant in the Department of Mathematical Sciences (UWM). Emmanuel also assists with mathematical modeling of frictional wear in the Tribology and Energy Diagnostics Lab in the school of Engineering.
Omid Ghiasvand
Hisham Madkour