Nov - Leonid Chindelevitch¶
Speaker: Leonid Chindelevitch
Talk Title: “Modelling infectious disease epidemics”
Event Details
Date/Time:
Thursday, November 5, 2015. 6:00pm
Affiliation: Assistant Professor, School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University
Web-site: Leonid Chindelevitch
Abstract:
Infectious diseases continue to affect the lives of millions of people around the world, but we still understand relatively little about how exactly they spread through populations. I will discuss an epidemiological model of the joint epidemic of tuberculosis and HIV in South Africa as an example of the kind of tools policymakers had at their disposal until recently. I will then go on to show how genotypic information can be harnessed to interrogate an epidemic, using the example of complex tuberculosis infections. I will conclude with a mechanistic model that describes the way bacterial pathogens may evolve resistance to drugs, and finally sketch a unified multiscale model that could one day provide new insights into the nature of infectious disease epidemics.
Bio:
My connection with bioinformatics started in my undergraduate years, when I did my first research project – and published my first paper – with Mathieu Blanchette at McGill University. I continued working in this field in graduate school under Bonnie Berger, and acquired expertise in the analysis of biological networks, at the interface of computational and systems biology. After a brief foray into the pharmaceutical industry, where I developed a platform for the analysis of various omics data, I returned to academia. My postdoctoral fellowship focused on a new area of application – epidemiology – and I became an expert in the rapidly developing field of molecular epidemiology, the study of epidemics through the prism of the information contained in the genomes of infectious disease-causing pathogens. My current work encompasses all of these subfields and focuses on infectious diseases. I really enjoy working with talented students and forming collaborations to explore various aspects of infectious diseases, ranging from their molecular biology all the way to population-level health policies.
Please note:
Trainees are invited to meet with the VanBUG speaker for open discussion of both science and career paths. This takes place 4:30-5:30pm in either the Boardroom or Lunchroom on the ground floor of the BCCRC
Recommended Readings
Introductory Speaker: Rodrigo Goya (PhD Candidate, Dr. Marco Marra’s Lab, BCCRC)
Title: “Alternative Expression in Triple Negative Breast Cancer Subgroups”
Webcast Link: http://vidyoreplay.computecanada.ca/replay/webcastShow.html?key=TAKdbjoDvIqKdLn
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