Tag: important

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Preprint Announcement – Roving and Unsupervised Bias

This week has been a really big week for me. I finally uploaded the first paper from my time as a postdoc to a pre-print server, called the bioRxiv. I did three major pieces of work, during my time as a postdoc, this is the first and potentially the only, of these, to see the light of day.

I am not usually so tardy in getting work out. I published two papers from my PhD – a record for working with my PhD supervisor – the work for both of which was finished before I ever defended the thesis. My postdoc work was a bit special, I ended up directly proving that the previous work of my collaborators was mistaken. Continue reading “Preprint Announcement – Roving and Unsupervised Bias”

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AI in Healthcare II

Continued from Part I

Part I of this article appeared last week. In it I introduced the topic of statistical vs biophysical approaches to biological applications. I discussed the huge power of statistical approaches in image analysis and providing decision support services to doctors. I then discussed the 5 major limitations of data-driven approaches when they are applied to biological problems.

I will now continue by looking at biophysical approaches, their pros and cons, and finishing up with a brief introduction to hybrids which attempt to combine these two methods. Continue reading “AI in Healthcare II”

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AI in Healthcare I

Motivation

I live in Berlin, which is fast becoming the tech hub of Europe. Over the past two years we have seen a massive up-tick in the number of healthcare oriented startups, which are receiving funding on the basis of their use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As somebody who knows a bit about the underlying technical and application problems of AI, what I see has made me very uneasy.

As a result of some personal conversations I was invited to give a Keynote address to the Digital Health Forum of the Berlin Institute of Health in March. This is a big deal because the BIH is a joint venture between Europe’s biggest teaching hospital, Charité Berlin, and one of Germany’s foremost centres for biological research, the Max-Delbrueck-Center, Berlin. The talk was extremely well received, so I have now given a public version at PyData Berlin 2018 which will be published on their YouTube channel in the coming weeks. (Update: the video is available here). In the meantime, I have written the discussion up as an article in two parts: part I is below and part II is available here. Continue reading “AI in Healthcare I”

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Mathematics and Biology

Having worked in two traditionally distinct fields, both separately and combining the methods of both, I have more than a few thoughts on what separates these disciplines and how this can be quite detrimental.

As I see it there are two core differences between a mathematical world-view and a biological one: the first is in how knowledge is acquired; and the other is the difference between a dynamical world-view and a static one. What may surprise you is which one is static and which one is dynamic!

Knowledge acquisition

Continue reading “Mathematics and Biology”

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Simmunology is….

my first real startup. That is, the first time that I’ve actually incorporated a company. Simmunology Limited exists since last week.

The path to incorporation has been an interesting and sometimes terrifying ride. (Aside: understatement will typically be an element of my style, this should be borne in mind when reading my prose.)  I finished up a postdoc in computational neuroscience at TU Berlin last December (2017). Since then I have been trying to establish a place for myself in the world in which I get to use my, not inconsiderable, experience to choose my own directions.

I left academia with a strong feeling that not-all is right in the academic world. In fact it is very, very wrong. But more importantly, I don’t think that the kind of cross-disciplinary talents which I bring to the table will ever be fully utilised in that sector, at least not as it exists today.

I came up with two pet projects which I thought I could work on to bring an impact to the world. The first,  Continue reading “Simmunology is….”