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Vancouver Bioinformatics User Group

VanBUG (Vancouver Bioinformatics Users Group) is an association of researchers, other professionals and students in the B.C. Lower Mainland who have an interest in the field of bioinformatics. VanBUG meets every month from September through April. Research presentations by bioinformatics leaders, students and industry representatives are followed by networking over pizza and refreshments

Upcoming meetings will be held monthly on Thursdays from 11:00am to 1:30pm and are free and open to all. The majority of VanBUG events will now be held simultaneously at UBC's Michael Smith Laboratories and SFU's Big Data Hub. The speaker will be present in-person at one location while the other location receives live video-streaming and Q&A. Both locations will have a post lecture social with free food and drink. Please refer to the Schedule page or subscribe to our Calendar for specific details regarding speaker location and room information.

As a service to the community, local VanBUG and other bioinformatics events are posted to the Calendar. Click Subscribe to subscribe to this calendar, so that all current and future events appear on your personal calendar.

Visit our sister groups for bioinformatics events in Montreal (MonBUG) and Toronto (TorBUG)!

VanBUG Special Event

Event Details

Date/Time:

Thursday, September 21st, 2023 11:00am - 1:30pm PT

Location:

SFU Big Data Hub, room ASB 10900

UBC, Michael Smith Laboratories, MSL 101 (Live Stream Location)

RSVP:

If you are interested in attending this seminar in person, please fill out the RSVP form.

Featured Speaker: Dr. Keegan Korthauer

Affiliations:

  • Assistant Professor, Statistics, University of British Columbia
  • Investigator, British Columbia Children’s Hospital Research Institute
  • Faculty Member, Bioinformatics and Genome Science and Technology graduate programs, University of British Columbia

Talk Title: Methylation matters: tool development for community discovery

Abstract:

Innovative technologies now allow us to probe the epigenome in more dimensions and at higher resolution than ever before. However, meaningful biological insights are challenging to uncover in these high-dimensional settings where classical statistics fail, and relevant signals can be masked by technical artifacts and systematic biases unique to each specialized assay. To unlock the full potential of DNA methylation data, the development of novel statistical frameworks and tailored computational implementations is needed. In this talk I will outline the major hurdles and opportunities in analyzing genome-scale DNA methylation data, and highlight examples from recent and ongoing work. I'll also discuss the process of computational tool development and maintenance for the benefit of the bioinformatics user community.

Bio:

Keegan Korthauer is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia and an investigator at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital Research Institute. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her research lies at the intersection of statistics and biology, and her group focuses on developing novel frameworks and rigorous inferential procedures that exploit the increased scope and scale of high-throughput sequencing data, with the ultimate goal of uncovering new molecular signals in cancer, child health, and development.

Trainee Speaker: Erick Navarro

Affiliation: UBC Graduate Student co-supervised by Dr. Michael Kobor and Dr. Keegan Korthauer

Talk Title: RAMEN: an R package for modeling the genome and exposome contribution to DNA methylome variability