Sushmita Roy

Title: Assistant Professor, Biostatistics and Medical Informatics
Office: University of Wisconin-Madison

Computational Inference of Regulatory Network Dynamics on Developmental and Evolutionary Lineages

 

Abstract: Transcriptional regulatory networks are central to context-specific gene expression patterns. Such networks specify the connections among regulatory proteins such as transcription factors and signaling proteins to target genes. A central challenge in systems biology is to identify these networks and build predictive models of overall system state using these networks. With advances in genomics and efforts from several large consortia, we have rich regulatory genomics datasets that measure different components of the regulation machinery in multiple cell types, tissues and species. A key challenge now is to systematically combine these datasets to gain insight into the regulatory networks that govern cellular state in complex eukaryotic systems. I will present some of our recent efforts to map these networks, starting with yeast S. cerevisiae as our test bed, and extending to mammalian regulatory networks for cell-fate specification. Our computational methods can be used to systematically identify regulatory networks in multiple species and provide testable hypotheses of how such networks govern downstream gene expression patterns.

Sushmita Roy is an assistant professor at the Biostatistics and Medical Informatics department and in Systems Biology at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Sushmita is a recipient of the 2014 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship and an NSF CAREER award. Sushmita's favorite free time activities are hiking, learning how to paint landscapes, and baking.