Overview

Our group uses cell profiling to understand what compounds do to cells, with a long-term goal of developing new computational methods that predict in vivo toxicity from in vitro exposures. While we are interested in using all forms of cell profiling (transcriptomic, metabolomic, etc), we are especially interested in image-based cell profiling because it is very cheap and amenable to high-throughput screens. Our work has applications in both regulatory toxicology (protecting humans and ecosystems from unintended chemical exposures) and pharmaceutical toxicology (assessing the safety of compounds that are designed to perturb human biology). Beyond direct applications of cell profiling to toxicology, we are also interested in pushing the boundaries of the types of information that can be detected / extracted from images of cells. Our work in this area is sometimes more towards fundamental single-cell biology.

This work is at the intersection of toxicology, cell biology, bioinformatics / omics data science, and machine learning. It’s highly unlikely that new members will be experts in all of these areas prior to joining! This guided reading list provides a brief introduction to the research areas listed above. It is meant to be a jumping off point for deeper exploration of a particular topic.