DR. JULIE CHIH-YU CHEN

HEAD, DATA SCIENCES, BIOINFORMATICS
NATIONAL MICROBIOLOGY LABORATORY

Where can I apply data science skills for public health?
Date: Thursday, May 20, 2021: Public Health
Time: 11:50 am – 12:30 pm

ABSTRACT
After having learned data science skills, the next step is to understand where one can practically apply these skills. Powerful as it is, artificial intelligence may not apply to all problems and, when it does, applicable techniques can differ depending on the type of data. In this talk, Julie will present her work on omics data and the recent global efforts on SARS-Cov-2 genomic data to give a sense of how data science can contribute to public health. She will also touch upon some other applications with natural language processing and image classification.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Julie Chih-yu Chen heads Data Sciences within the Bioinformatics section at the National Microbiology Laboratory, Public Health Agency of Canada. At work, she leads the ongoing learning of biological/omics data science, and applies Statistical and Machine Learning approaches to microbial omics datasets in tackling biological and public health challenges. The interdisciplinary nature of her career path is largely shaped by her training in both Molecular Biology (MSc, UofT 2011) and Bioinformatics (PhD, UBC 2016) as well as collaborations with researchers in biological and computational fields. She led a team that won the CAMDA international data analytical challenge on metagenomic geolocation in 2019. With the interest in addressing biological challenges, her scientific contribution for the past 10 years typically involves an examination of omics data for pre-processing, visualization, and extraction of biological information using data science techniques for the challenge at hand.