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Edward Russell Dougherty

Title of talk : Genomic Signal Processing: A Transformational Approach to Medicine

Abstract

Genomics and proteomics study large-scale interactions of genes and proteins. From an engineering perspective, genes receive and send protein-based signals to regulate the overall function of the cell, both its maintenance and reproduction. In this context, the new engineering discipline of Genomic Signal Processing (GSP) has been defined as the analysis, processing, and use of genomic signals for gaining biological knowledge and the translation of that knowledge into systems-based applications. An important goal of GSP is to discover families of genes whose signals can be used for molecular-based diagnosis and prognosis – for instance, predicting the effect of a cancer drug so that a patient can receive the drug best suited to his or her genetic make-up. The long-term goal is to characterize genetic regulation, thereby gaining a functional understanding of disease, and to use this understanding to transform medicine into a systems-based engineering discipline. A salient aspect of this transformation is construction of gene regulatory models and the application of systems engineering to obtain optimal therapeutic strategies using these regulatory models.

Short Bio

Dr. Edward R. Dougherty is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, where he holds the Robert M. Kennedy Chair and is Director of the Genomic Signal Processing Laboratory. He is also the Director of the Computational Biology Division of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, AZ. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University and an M.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, and has been awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa by the Tampere University of Technology in Finland. He is a fellow of SPIE, has received the SPIE President’s Award, and served as the editor of the SPIE/IS&T Journal of Electronic Imaging.

At Texas A&M he has received the Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Research, been named Fellow of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station, and named Halliburton Professor of the Dwight Look College of Engineering. Prof. Dougherty is author of fourteen books, editor of five others, and author of more than two hundred journal papers. His current research in genomic signal processing is aimed at diagnosis and prognosis based on genetic signatures and using gene regulatory networks to develop therapies based on the disruption or mitigation of aberrant gene function contributing to the pathology of a disease.