Mingyao Li, PhD, Professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine will be giving a presentation on “AI-driven Smart Spatial Omics.” This presentation is entirely virtual, and will occur on February 4, 2025, 12:00pm - 1:00pm via Zoom. Registration is required, and upon registration, attendees will received a confirmation email with information about joining the meeting.

ABSTRACT: Spatial omics technologies have revolutionized biomedical research by providing detailed, spatially resolved molecular profiles that enhance our understanding of tissue structure and function at unprecedented levels. Histopathology is considered the clinical gold standard for disease diagnosis. However, the integration of histological information in spatial omics data analysis has been limited due to a lack of computational pathology expertise among computational biologists. In this talk, Dr. Li will present several tools that have been recently developed to leverage pathology image information, thereby enhancing spatial omics data analysis.

Presenter: Dr. Mingyao Li is a Professor of Biostatistics, Statistics and Data Science, and Digital Pathology at the University of Pennsylvania (UPENN). Dr. Li serves as the Director of the Statistical Center for Single-Cell and Spatial Genomics. She is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Li joined the UPENN faculty in 2006 and has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, including many corresponding-authored papers published in high-impact journals such as Nature Genetics, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, Science, and The Lancet. More recently, Dr. Li has expanded her expertise into computational pathology, focusing on the application of statistical and machine learning methods to understand cellular heterogeneity in human-disease-relevant tissues using data from single-cell and spatial transcriptomics studies. In recognition of her contributions to integrating spatial transcriptomics with histopathology, she was recently named to the 2024 Power List by The Pathologist.