[Colloquium] REMINDER: TTIC Colloquium: Prof. Tijana Milenkovic, University of Notre Dame

[Dawn Ellis]

When:     Monday, December 1st at 11am

Where:    TTIC, 6045 S Kenwood Avenue, 5th Floor, Room 526
Who:       Prof. Tijana Milenkovic, University of Notre Dame
Title:       Novel directions for biological network comparison:
implications for aging
Abstract:
Networks (or graphs) have been useful models for many real-world phenomena
in various research domains. Examples include technological networks such
as the Internet, information networks such as the World Wide Web, social
networks such as Facebook, ecological networks such as food webs, or
biological networks such as protein-protein interaction networks. Owing to
the exponential growth of real-world network data, the complexity of the
networks has become the central issue in their understanding. Hence, there
is a need for sophisticated mathematical and computational techniques for
mining the networks.
We will present our recent computational approaches for comparing (i.e.,
aligning) large real-world networks, as well as for studying their
evolution, in order to enable efficient extraction of functional
information from network structure. Then, we will discuss how the
approaches can be applied to biological networks, e.g., networks of
interactions between proteins in the cell, to address many important
problems in biomedicine, such as identifying novel aging-related genes and
thus drug targets. In addition, we will show that the same methods can be
successfully used to study other network types as well, such as social
networks – networks of friendships and acquaintances or on-line social
communities. For example, we will illustrate the application of our network
approaches to studying how face-to-face, SMS, Facebook, and other
interactions between individuals affect the individuals’ (health-related)
traits, such as body mass index, weight, or happiness.
Biography:
Tijana Milenkovic is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and
Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. She got her Ph.D. in Computer
Science at the University of California, Irvine in 2010, her M.Sc. in
Computer Science at the same university in 2008, and her B.Sc. in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Sarajevo,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 2005. Her Complex Networks (CoNe) Lab focuses on
developing computational methods for efficient extraction of function from
large, noisy, heterogeneous, and dynamic biological networks. At the same
time, through interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers from
Biology, Psychology, and Social Sciences, Milenkovic aims to demonstrate
practical usefulness of her methods in the different domains. To date, her
research has been funded by two NSF grants, including an EAGER grant
intended for “highly risky, potentially transformative research”, a
collaborative Google Faculty Research Award, and two collaborative NIH
grants. Her research efforts have resulted in two book chapters and over 20
journal publications (e.g., in Science, PNAS, or Bioinformatics; several of
the publications have been labeled as “Highly Accessed” and “Highly
Visible” by the respective journal), along with a number of conference
papers. She has acted as an Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM TCBB, as a
proceedings co-chair, workshop and tutorial organizer, and PC member at
prestigious computational biology conferences, as a reviewer for many
journals, and as a proposal review panelist for several funding agencies,
including NSF and NIH. Milenkovic is strongly committed to integrating
research and education. For example, she has designed two novel
research-oriented courses at Notre Dame at both graduate and undergraduate
level, provided research supervision to both graduate and undergraduate
students (with several of the undergrads being first authors on the
respective publications), and organized yearly workshops on network
research at a career conference for K-12 middle school girls.
Host:  Jinbo Xu, j3xu at ttic.edu


--
Dawn Ellis
Administrative Coordinator,
Bookkeeper
773-834-1757
dellis at ttic.edu
TTIC
6045 S. Kenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL. 60637

-- 
*Dawn Ellis*
Administrative Coordinator,
Bookkeeper
773-834-1757
dellis at ttic.edu

TTIC
6045 S. Kenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL. 60637
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