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Computational Medicine and Human Genetics at UCLA, with support from NIH, held the third Lange Symposium on Feb 3, 2023. The topic for this year’s symposium was Computational Statistics. This annual event celebrates the impact of Dr. Lange’s research, mentorship, and teaching over the course of an illustrious career spanning more than four decades. It features scientific talks by some of Dr. Lange’s esteemed colleagues and former trainees. 

Elizabeth G. Atkinson | Nature Genetics

Quantifying whether different populations share similar effect sizes of common causal variants is vital to understand the genetic basis of disease and build better prediction models. A new study proposes a method leveraging admixture to estimate the correlation of causal genetic variants and finds they are largely similar across ancestry backgrounds.

Nature Genetics

Charlotte Bhaskar, PLOS | cbhaskar@plos.org

The Department of Computational Medicine is pleased to announce a new online, self-supporting graduate program called the Master of Science in Data Science in Biomedicine. The program will combine foundational training in all areas of data science including machine learning, statistics, data mining, algorithms and analytics with understanding of application areas including genomics, medical imaging, and analysis of electronic health records as well as other types of medical data (wavefor

Please join us on May 15 for the prestigious, honorary John H. Walsh Young Investigators Research Prize Seminar.

Dr. Valerie A. Arboleda presents her research on Unraveling the Influence of Genetics in Human Disease.

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Dr. Weizhe Hong presents his research on Understanding the Social Brain.

Monday, May 15, 2023
Noon to 1:15 pm
NRB Auditorium

Lunch is provided after the seminar for all those who register for in-person attendance:

UCLA Computational Medicine and Statistics professor Jingyi Jessica Li won one of the 2023 COPSS Emerging Leader Awards. The award recognizes the talents, leadership potential, and achievements of high-potential early career statistical scientists. 

The Overton Prize recognizes the research, education, and service accomplishments of early to mid-career scientists who are emerging leaders in computational biology and bioinformatics. The Overton Prize was instituted in 2001 to honor the untimely loss of G. Christian Overton, a leading bioinformatics researcher and a founding member of the ISCB Board of Directors.

Computational Medicine continues to expand its faculty by recruiting professors with primary appointments in other departments and recent PhDs as Assistant Adjunct Professors. The new faculty complement the research of our current faculty and students and contribute to the community by serving on committees and participating in CGSI and other activities. Their affiliation with Comp Med also supports collaboration across disciplines, departments, and schools.

David Sampson | dsampson@mednet.ucla.edu

UCLA researchers have developed an “all-in-one,” next-generation statistical simulator capable of assimilating a wide range of information to generate realistic synthetic data and provide a benchmarking tool for medical and biological researchers who use advanced technologies to study diseases and potential therapies. Specifically, the new computer-modeling – or “in silico” – system can help researchers evaluate and validate computational methods.

David Sampson | DSampson@mednet.ucla.edu

Polygenic scores – estimates of an individual’s predisposition for complex traits and diseases – hold promise for identifying patients at risk of disease and guiding early, personalized treatments, but UCLA experts found the scores fail to account for the wide range of genetic diversity across individuals in all ancestries.