Academic Lectures
We have invited several high-level experts and research leaders to give lectures and share your knowledge with you. Here is a short overview of their background and abstracts.
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Veli Mäkinen - Elements of Pangenomic Data Science
University of Helsinki Homepage, Google Scholar
Abstract: The lectures introduce the audience to the analysis of massive genome sequencing datasets. The focus will be on compressed data structures that enable scalable analysis. To motivate the technical content, the lectures will start with an overview of standard genome analysis workflows for read alignment, variant calling, and haplotype assembly. Then the data structure prerequisites, including suffix trees, suffix arrays, Burrows-Wheeler transform, rank and select, and wavelet tree, are covered, followed by showing how these structures are used in practical read alignment tools. After covering these classical elements, the lectures continue into extending the techniques to pangenomic data: all known variants observed in a species (pangenome) are used as the basis of the analyses, instead of a single reference genome. Various pangenome representations are introduced, including sets of strings, variation graphs, founder graphs, founder sequences, and elastic strings. Tailored data structures and algorithms to enable read alignment on these representations are covered, including efficient discovery of maximal exact matches as seeds with so-called r-index, maximum flow-based path cover approximation, and sparse dynamic programming for chaining seeds. The lectures are based on a textbook: Mäkinen, Belazzougui, Cunial, Tomescu. Genome-Scale Algorithm Design: Bioinformatics in the era of high-throughput sequencing. Cambridge University Press, 2023, http://www.genome-scale.info
Bio: Veli Mäkinen is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki and Vice-Head of Department. He has supervised seven PhD theses and is currently supervising one. Veli Mäkinen started his career in string algorithms and compressed data structures. As of 2023, he has 120 peer-reviewed publications on these and related topics, with the focus being shifted towards algorithmic bioinformatics, where different high-throughput sequencing data analysis scenarios make near-linear time algorithms that work in small space an appealing target of study. Some current research interests include studying algorithms and computational complexity when moving from sequences to variation graphs in pangenomics, and studying applications of different index structures related to the variants of the Burrows-Wheeler transform. Veli Mäkinen serves in several programme committees (e.g., ESA 2022, CPM 2023, WABI 2023, RECOMB 2024, ISMB 2024) and has given invited talks e.g. at SPIRE 2019 and Genome Informatics 2023.
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