The PhD defence will be in Abels utsikt - Niels Henrik Abels hus. The host of the session will moderate the technicalities while the chair of the defence will moderate the disputation.
Ex auditorio questions: the chair of the defence will invite the audience to ask questions ex auditorio at the end of the defence.
- Submit request to access (available from August 23rd 1:15 pm until September 6th 1:15 pm)
Trial lecture
September 6th, time: 10:15 am, room 1259 (Abels utsikt).
"Multiple instance learning"
Main research findings
To fight against diseases, the human body produces antibodies that bind to pathogens such as viruses or cancer cells. Understanding how this binding occurs is crucial to find new treatments against diseases.
Antibodies consist of chains of specific molecular components called amino acids. In recent years, new biotechnologies have enabled detailed access to the amino acid composition of large numbers of antibodies. Thus, there is now a high interest in predicting pathogen recognition based on the amino acid information. In particular, interactions between the amino acids are believed to be key to recognition of a large number of different pathogens.
In this work, I study how to model and detect these interactions from the statistical point of view. Statistical interactions can be defined as a non-additive effect of variables on a response function, and here this response function is used to predict binding capacity. Several methods exist to detect such interactions. I compare the performance of existing and new detection methods in the antibody setting, and study how they can be used to improve the understanding of pathogen recognition. To cover a wide range of settings, I use a combination of simulated data, real data, uni-dimensional data and spatial data.
Adjudication committee
- Professor Jacob von Bornemann Hjelmborg, Syddansk Universitet
- Professor Solve Sæbø, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
- Associate Professor Riccardo De Bin, University of Oslo
Supervisors
- Associate Professor Ingrid Hobæk Haff, University of Oslo
- Professor Geir Kjetil Ferkingstad Sandve, University of Oslo
Chair of defence
Head of Department Geir Dahl.
Host of the session
Associate Professor Riccardo De Bin, University of Oslo