Doctoral Student, University of Kansas Medical Center
Title: Calculating detection limits and uncertainty of DNA methylation based cellular deconvolution
Shelby Bell-Glenn received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and statistics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2018 and her master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of Kansas Medical Center in 2020. She is currently a PhD candidate in biostatistics at the University of Kansas Medical Center with an expected graduation date of May 2023. Her dissertation research aims to improve methylomics studies using reference-based DNA methylation deconvolution of cellular mixtures.
Associate Professor, Pittsburg State University
Title: Study of microbial communities from various niches using culture-based and genomics approaches
Dr. Ghosh is an associate professor in the Department of Biology at Pittsburg state University. She is a microbiologist, and her research is based on the One Health perspective. Her projects focus on various aspects of food safety, antibiotic resistance and virulence of food borne pathogens, and molecular diagnostics. A few projects deal with host-pathogen interaction in vectors such as ticks and mosquitoes. She also has projects related to restoration of environmental health. She has introduced whole genome sequence analysis and bioinformatics in the undergraduate curriculum and teaching.
Professor, University of Kansas Medical Center
Title: Training in Data Science available through KINBRE
Dr. Koestler is a Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Kansas Medical Center. He received his PhD in Biostatistics from Brown University and completed his postdoctoral research training in the Quantitative Biosciences (QBS) program at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. His primary research involves the development and application of statistical methodologies for high-throughput ‘omics’ data, with an emphasis on array-based DNA methylation data. In addition to his methodological interests, which include: statistical genomics, computational statistics, machine learning, and finite mixture models, he also has a deeply rooted interest in epigenetics and molecular epidemiology. Many of Dr. Koestler’s collaborations involve large-scale epidemiologic studies for studying DNA methylation and its relationship to environmental and lifestyle exposures, as well as its role disease susceptibility and prognosis. Dr. Koestler also currently serves as co-Director of the Biostatistics and Informatics Shared Resource (BISR) that supports the University of Kansas Cancer Center (KUCC), the KUMC Site-Director for Kansas-INBRE (K-INBRE) Bioinformatics, and the Director of the Quantitative ‘Omics Core (QOC) that supports the Kansas Institute for Precision Medicine (KIPM).
Assistant Professor, Kansas State University
Title: Wrangling Data Using KARMA
Hande Küçük McGinty received her bachelor’s degree in computer engineering at Bilkent University in 2007 and her master’s degree in computer science at Eastern Michigan University in 2010. She worked as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, before she finished her doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. She worked with the USDA at Ohio University before joining the computer science department at K-State in 2022. Dr. McGinty has a long history of working with interdisciplinary teams. Her most recent research focuses on food, agriculture and bio-ontologies and their applications for artificial intelligence and machine learning. She previously worked on designing and implementing semantic web technologies and ontologies as well as generating methods and implementing tools for knowledge acquisition and representation. McGinty has served several conferences and workshops.
Professor, University of Texas at Dallas
Title: Identifying and Developing Targets for Neuropathic Pain Treatment
Dr. Price is internationally recognized for his work on molecular characterization of human pain sensing neurons, chronic pain mechanisms and development of non-opioid pain therapeutics. He has more than 170 publications, founded the Center for Advanced Pain Studies, and has started 5 companies focused on clinical development of new analgesics.
Assistant Professor, Washburn University
Title: Digital Holographic Microscopy as a Tool for Non-invasive, Real-time Measurement of Cellular Dynamics
Dr. Rossi received his Ph.D. in Physics from Oregon State University (OSU) in 2015. Much of his PhD research was carried out via the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Oregon Health & Science University, where he was a visiting graduate student and later a research assistant. There, he trained in light-tissue interactions and used digital holographic microscopy and computational modeling in order to study photodynamic therapy of osteosarcoma. Prior to coming to Washburn University, Dr. Rossi was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pacific University and a Visiting Instructor at Texas A&M University. He also worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow for the Center for Imaging Medicine through the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. His research there involved Multi-Spectral Imaging as applied towards fluorescence microscopy of breast cancer models. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Washburn University, where he emphasizes teaching and incorporating undergraduate research into his biophotonics laboratory.
Assistant Professor, Wichita State University
Title: Apply protein cross-linking to study amyloid-protein interactions
Dr. Haifan Wu is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Wichita State University. He got his bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University (China) in 2010. Then, he moved to the US and did his PhD study with Prof. Jianfeng Cai at the University of South Florida. In 2015 he moved to University of California San Francisco to work with Prof. Bill DeGrado as a postdoctoral fellow. He started his independent career in Fall 2020, and his lab is developing tools to study protein structures and protein-protein interactions. Another area he is working on is the drug discovery effort against neuroinflammation to treat Alzheimer’s disease.