Mark your calendars! The Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology (GGSB) graduate program is thrilled to announce our upcoming symposium:
AI in Genomics
Friday, May 8, 2026
9:30 am - 4:30 pm
KCBD Auditorium, Room 1103
Reception to follow
Join us for an exceptional day exploring the cutting-edge intersection of artificial intelligence and genomics, with our featured Speakers:
- Katie Pollard, PhD, Gladstone Institutes, University of California, San Francisco. Title: Personal genome interpretation with sequence-based machine learning
- Andrew Kern, PhD, University of Oregon. Title: Putting the HAL in Haldane: Deep Learning for Population Genomics
- Alex Lu, PhD, Microsoft Research. Title: Advancing generative genomic models with evolution
- Arjun Krishnan, PhD, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Title: Harnessing public data at scale using ML/AI to illuminate disease biology
- Siwei Chen, PhD, University of Chicago. Title: Learning residue-level context for modeling protein-protein interactions
-
Aly Khan, PhD, University of Chicago. Title: New computational approaches to understand immune function
Co-Sponsored by: Ben May Department for Cancer Research, BSD Dean of Students Office, Cell and Molecular Biology Graduate Program, Committee on Evolutionary Biology, Department Human Genetics, Department of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, Diversity and Inclusion Biological Sciences Division, Genetic Mechanisms and Evolution Training Grant, Human Genetics Graduate Program, Medical Scientist Training Program, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, Section of Genetic Medicine
For questions, please contact Sue Levison at slevison@bsd.uchicago.edu
GGSB THESIS DEFENSE EVENTS
Thursday, May 21, 2026: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm - GCIS W301/303. GGSB Thesis Defense: Marta Majcherska-Agrawal (Chuan He Lab) Will Present and Defend The Doctoral Dissertation Entitled: Title Coming Soon
Wednesday, May 13, 2026: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm. KCBD Auditorium, Room 1103. Busayo Bolonduro (Andrew Koh Lab) Will Present and Defend The Doctoral Dissertation Entitled: “Developmental bias in transcription factor activity organizes ectopic gene expression in thymic epithelial cells”
Monday, April 13, 2026: 9:30 am – 10:30 am. GCIS W301/303. Ashish Thakur (Francois Spitz Lab) Title: Encoding principles of insulator activity in CTCF-Cohesin-bound genomic elements
Tuesday, March 31, 2026: 2:15 pm – 3:15 pm. KCBD Auditorium, Room 1103. Hyunkyung Kim (Andy Dahl Lab) Title: “SPATULA: Anchored Bayesian Factorization for Distilling Trait-Specific Genetic Architecture in Correlated Phenotypes”
Tuesday, February 3, 2026: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm. KCBD Auditorium, Room 1103. Manasa Prahlad (Paschalis Kratsios Lab) Title: “Generation and Maintenance of Motor Neuron Identity Through the Intersection of HOX/PBX and Terminal Selector Functions”
Monday, January 26, 2026: 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Via Zoom. Sabrina Arif (Ran Blekhman Lab) Title: “Characterizing gut microbiome composition, activity, and host response in global populations”
Thursday, November 20, 2025: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm. KCBD Auditorium, Room 1103. Jing Gu (Xin He Lab) Title: “Linking genetic variants to complex traits through single-cell genomics and RNA modification”
For additional information, please contact Sue Levison at slevison@bsd.uchicago.edu
January 29, 2026: Mark Minogue & Paschalis Kratsios Present: Single-cell brain organoid screening identifies developmental defects in autism & Caden Proctor & David Pincus Present: Protein codes promote selective subcellular compartmentalization
February 12, 2026: Daniel Lee & Jian Zhou Present: Computational Design of Conformation-Biasing Mutations to Alter Protein Functions & Mei Knudson & Xin He Present: ChromBPNet: bias factorized, base-resolution deep learning models of chromatin accessibility reveal cis-regulatory sequence syntax, transcription factor footprints and regulatory variants
March 5, 2026: Axel Zagal Norman & Maanasa Raghavan Present: The dispersal of domestic cats from North Africa to Europe around 2000 years ago & Zining Qi & Sebastian Pott Present: A disease-associated gene desert directs macrophage inflammation through ETS2
April 2, 2026: Mady Scherr & Ivan Moskowitz Present: Convergence of coronary artery disease genes onto endothelial cell programs & Roxana Wu & Mengjie Chen Present: Evolution of promoter-proximal pausing enabled a new layer of transcription control
April 16, 2026: Hao Yu & Jingxin Wang Present: CRISPR-dCas13d-based deep screening of proximal and distal splicing-regulatory elements & S’Khaja Charles & Andy Dahl Present: CRISPR-dCas13d-based deep screening of proximal and distal splicing-regulatory elements
April 30, 2026: Riley Xin & Andy Dahl Present: Inferring gene regulatory networks from single-cell multiome data using atlas-scale external data & Michelle Sun & Aly Khan Present: Genome-scale perturb-seq in primary human CD4+ T cells maps context-specific regulators of T cell programs and human immune traits
May 21, 2026: Gabe Hatto & Arjun Raman Present: The fitness landscape of overlapping genes & Mingrui Yu & Mengjie Chen Present: Mapping cells through time and space with moscot
Please contact Sue Levison at slevison@bsd.uchicago.edu for additional information
January 15, 2026: Dylan Cook (Oni Basu Lab) Title: "Disturbed flow emerges in the cephalic arch of hemodialysis patients before fistula maturation" & Geena Woo (Yoav Gilad Lab) Title: "Characterization of inter-individual and cell-type-specific responses to treatment with ALK inhibitors"
February 19, 2026: Dylan Stermer (Yang Li Lab) Title: "Mapping Functional Impact of Alternative Splicing Coupled Nonsense-Mediated Decay" & Karl Tayeb (Matthew Stephens Lab) Title: "Generalizing the sum of single effects regression"
March 12, 2026: Alexander Chen (Yoav Gilad Lab) Title: "Characterizing gene expression variability within and between species" & Kellen Riall (Jeremy Berg Lab) Title: "Pleiotropic stabilizing selection obscures signals of directional selection against complex disease"
March 26, 2026: Pinky Lee (Ronan O’Malley Lab) Title: "Mapping the Human Transcription Factor Cistrome Using DAP-seq" & Temi Adeluwa (Haky Im Lab) Title: "TFXcan finds transcription factors associated with diseases"
April 9, 2026: Josh Sodicoff (David Pincus Lab) Title: "Molecular and ecophysiological basis of cross-acclimation in phototrophs"
April 23, 2026: Ernesto Gagarin (Ronan O’Malley Lab) Title: "Genetic Redundancy and the Co-regulation of Plant Drought Response by bZIP and DREB TF family paralogs" & Raven Moten (Sebastian Pott Lab) Title: "Characterizing Cis-Regulatory Control of Cellular Differentiation with Long-Read Single-Molecule Footprinting"
Please contact Sue Levison at slevison@bsd.uchicago.edu for additional information
Tuesday, October 7, 2025 - 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm - KCBD Auditorium, Room 1103: Tina Lasisi, PhD, University of Michigan. Title: “Interpreting and designing regulatory DNA with deep learning”
Please contact Sue Levison at slevison@bsd.uchicago.edu for additional information