Precision Medicine Lab attended the annual the workshop on Big Data and Cloud Computing (BigC 2019) at Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering (SBASSE) at LUMS.

The objective of the workshop was to provide a platform to researchers, students, and practitioners to discuss the cutting edge research and state-of-the-art industry solutions in the Big Data and Cloud Computing area. The workshop included invited talks from experts in academia, industry, and government. It also included panel discussions on how Big Data and Cloud Computing technologies can be used to solve problems of national importance as well as meeting sustainable development goals. In addition, a hands-on tutorial was conducted to familiarise students and participants with the current research and its applications in the area of machine learning, high performance computing, and cloud computing.

This workshop was intended for faculty, students, researchers, and practitioners focusing on Big Data, IoTs, and Cloud Computing. Relevant topics included:

• Big data analytics and visualisation • Big data infrastructure and management • Social media analytics • Service orchestration and management
• Cloud/edge/fog computing • Internet of Things • Internetware and DevOps • Security, privacy, and legal issues • Applications: e-government, e-health, e-agriculture, e-learning, smart city, smart grid

PI, Dr. Faisal Khan conducted a tutorial session titled “Data in Biology 101”

The purpose of this tutorial was to introduce data scientists and computer scientists to the world of modern-day biology which arguably has terabytes of data in every cell of every living organism which we now have the ability to harness.

During the session, he said “Everything we see in nature is coded in one common language – DNA. With exponential developments in the technology to sequence (i.e. read) DNA and to synthesize (i.e. write DNA), biology has suddenly transformed from a science to an engineering discipline.”

The tutorial gave a brief overview of biology and how it is has evolved over the past century thanks to rapid technological developments. This was followed by an overview of the different types and its biological sources of datasets. The tutorial concluded with an overview of the most common databases used to obtain these datasets from with some fresh examples from the Precision Medicine Lab.

PML research team presented the following 5 research posters accepted in the poster session on the 3rd day of the workshop.

  1. “The analysis of methylation data in head and neck cancer” Saad Zaheer & Faisal Khan
  2. “Analysis of DNA Methylation of Skin Cutaneous Melonoma using TCGA Datasets” Sajjad Hussain & Faisal Khan
  3. “Abnormalities in DNA Methylation: A Biomarker for Kidney Cancer” Jalees Ur Rahman & Faisal Khan
  4. “Oral Cancer: a test bed for Precision Medicine in Pakistan” Habib Jan, Johar Ali & Faisal Khan
  5. “A Systematic analysis of microbial dysbiosis in prediction of its role in oral squamous cell carcinoma” Abdus Salam & Faisal Khan

This workshop was hosted by the National Center in Big Data and Cloud Computing (NCBC) at LUMS.

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