Statistical Bioinformatics Seminar: Andy Tran

Title: From benchtop to bedside: advancing multi-omics statistical methods for precision
medicine 

Speaker: Andy Tran (University of Sydney) 

Abstract: Recent advancements in biotechnology allow scientists to analyse biological
samples at an unprecedented scale.  This holds great promise for precision medicine by
improving our understanding of diseases and developing new diagnostic tools.  However,
drawing meaningful insights from this complex data demands bespoke statistical methods,
tailored to the data and context.  In particular, there is a lack of statistical tools
that effectively use different data types for a clinical application.  This talk
introduces a workflow to compare lipid profiles and genetic profiles between humans and
chimpanzees, bringing insights into the evolutionary factors contributing to
susceptibility to coronary artery disease.  We also describe a framework to construct
and optimise multi-platform clinical pathways, and how this can be used to improve
fairness in clinical decision-making.  

About the speaker: Andy completed his undergraduate degree in pure mathematics and
statistics at the University of Sydney in 2019.  He then completed his MPhil in 2021,
under the supervision of A/Prof John Ormerod, on statistical modelling of cell
reprogramming.  He submitted his PhD thesis in December 2024, under the supervision of
Prof Jean Yang, which focused on translational bioinformatics for precision medicine.
Andy is currently an education-focused lecturer in the School of Mathematics and
Statistics at the University of Sydney.