Mission Statement
DISL’s interests are in the areas of data science and machine learning, with particular focus on biomedical modelling. Our research activities include both theoretical and applied studies aimed at developing prediction models of future health and life aided by technology and data intelligence. Furthermore, we are innovating research in data science by hybridizing theory-based approaches with hypothesis-free, bottom-up data mining. We are committed to fostering an environment of diversity and inclusion both through research, education and scholarly activities. DISL’s vision is pursuing ideas in “humanely ethical” artificial intelligence for health and beyond, working to ameliorate recent discomforting results in social and welfare modelling, as “biased algorithms are everywhere, and no one seems to care.”
People
Team Lead
PHHP Coordinator for AI
Current Members
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Shantrel S Canidate | Clinical Assistant Professor | ssc1987@ufl.edu | |
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Inyoung Jun | Graduate Research Assistant | inyoungjun@ufl.edu | |
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Yiyang Liu | Postdoctoral Scholar | yliu26@ufl.edu | |
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Simone Marini | RES AST PROF | simone.marini@ufl.edu | |
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Shannan N Rich | GRADUATE AST-R | shannanrich@ufl.edu |
Former Members
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| Zhaoyi Chen | Jae Min | Kai Wang | Shantanu Ghosh |
Collaborators
Dr. Marco Salemi
Professor in Department of Pathology
Emerging Pathogens Institute
Dr. Ilaria Capua
Professor in Department of Animal Sciences
Director of One Health Center for Excellence
Dr. Jiang Bian
Associate Professor in Department of Health Outcomes & Biomedical Informatics
Director of Cancer Informatics Shared Resource
Dr. Christina Boucher
Assistant Professor in Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering
Dr. Alberto Riva
Director of Digital Biology Group
Bioinformatics Associate Scientist
Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research
Dr. Volker Mai
Associate Professor in Department of Epidemiology
Dr. Robert L. Cook
Professor in Department of Epidemiology
Director of Southern HIV Alcohol Research Consortium
Current Projects
- NSF SCH INT Enabling real-time surveillance of antimicrobial resistance
Aims at developing computational tools to process and analyze high-throughput sequencing data from antimicrobial resistance studies using mobile and portable technologies - Forecasting trajectories of HIV transmission networks with a novel phylodynamic and deep learning network
Aims at fusing deep learning with phylodynamics modelling toward multi-factor prediction of transmission clusters in the HIV epidemic - COV-DYNAMITE
Dynamic clustering of SARS-CoV-2 phylogenies under heterogeneous sampling to identify and forecast transmission hotspots - Antimicrobial Resistance
Our latest project studies the acquisition of antibiotic resistance in pathogens through clinical and agricultural surveillance and development of novel methods to analyze metagenomics data. This project is supported by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. - HIV
We are currently pursuing several projects on HIV transmmission: 1) Developing novel theoretical and technical framework to model HIV transmission clusters, 2) geospatial modeling of HIV drug resistance in Florida, and 3) investigating the role of viral evolution in HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders. These projects are supported by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and Florida Department of Health. - Job Loss
Using deep learning and natural language processing, we are studying individual and network determinants of dramatic life events like job loss using social media. This project is supported by National Science Foundation.
News
- Inyoung Jun received KSEA-KUSCO* scholarship which is to recognize Korean graduate students in the US who excel in academics as well as in services to the community, and have demonstrated a potential to become future leaders of the society for closer cooperation between the U.S. and Korea.
- DISL PhD student Inyoung Jun presented her work “How can machine learning improve prediction of hospital deaths due to drug-resistant bacterial disease?” at UFII Fellows Journal Club on April 29th, 2021.
- Dr. Prosperi has been named Coordinator for AI for the College of Public Health and Health Professions.
- Our new method for causal AI (DAG bagging) has been published by the Journal of Biomedical Informatics.
- Drs. Boucher, Jeong, Prosperi, and Ruiz have been awarded the NSFSmart and Connected Health grant “Enabling real-time surveillance of antimicrobial resistance” to develop computational tools tailored to mobile/portable technology and protocols.
- Dr. Prosperi et al. published the paper “Causal inference and counterfactual prediction in machine learning for actionable healthcare” in Nature Machine Intelligence
- DISL student Inyoung Jun has been awarded the UF Informatics Institute Graduate Student Fellowship
- Dr. Prosperi (in collaboration with Dr. Salemi, Pathology; Dr. Cook, Epidemiology; and Dr. Wu, Engineering) has been awarded an new R01 from NIH NIAID as MPI, titled “Forecasting trajectories of HIV transmission networks with a novel phylodynamic and deep learning framework”
- Dr. Prosperi with Dr. Natalie Dean (UF Biostatistics) and Dr. Marco Salemi (UF Pathology) have been awarded a new NSF project in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, titled RAPID: Dynamic Identification of SARS-COV-2 Transmission Epicenters in Presence of Spatial Heterogeneity (COV-DYNAMITE)
- Read our new comment on the importance of developing causal AI
- Check out our latest commentary on the never-ending rivalry between statistics and machine learning
- Dr. Prosperi and Dr. Bian (HOBI Dept) published a correspondence in Nature Machine Intelligence, titled “Is it time to rethink institutional review boards for the era of big data?”
- Dr. Prosperi and Dr. Boucher receive an R01 grant from NIH on “Developing Computational Methods for Surveillance of Antimicrobial Resistant Agents”
- Zhaoyi Chen, a PhD student in the DISL lab and UF Informatics Institute fellow, presented at the Journal Club/Fellows luncheon this Wednesday, November 28. He presented his work on prediction modeling of rheumatoid arthritis using machine learning.
- Dr. Prosperi and collaborators Shannan Rich and Veronica Richards won best poster for Phylogenetic Inference at the 23rd International Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology (VEME2018) in Berlin, Germany
- Our HIV-DYNAMITE grant award notice was shared on the Association of Schools & Programs of Public Health newsletter
- Zhaoyi received the UF Informatics Institute’s Graduate Student Fellowship to build prediction models for rheumatoid arthritis and other rheumatoid diseases
- Update on our MiniSeq Project
*Korean-American Scientist and Engineers Association (KSEA) & Korea-US Science Cooperation Center (KUSCO)
Recent Publications
For the most up-to-date list, please visit: Google Scholar
Follow us on Twitter: Mattia Prosperi@MasahikoKim, Shannan N Rich@rich_shannan