Speaker Details

Biography

Bent Petersen is an Associate Professor in bioinformatics and Head of Studies for Human Life Science at the Technical University of Denmark, DTU. He is also the Deputy Director for the Centre of Excellence for Omics-Driven Computational Biodiscovery (COMBio) at AIMST University, Malaysia. He has a thorough experience in machine learning and has further specialized within the field of genomics and metagenomics where he is working extensively with Next Generation Sequencing data. His research group actively collects samples from all over the world and develops new tools that address the unique challenges of microbial and antique systems biology often by using machine learning. The research group is part of the “AI - Artificial Intelligence in Life Science” section of DTU Bioinformatics with machine learning as a focus. Currently, he is working extensively on genome and metagenome projects from various branches of the tree of life where they are using supercomputers to analyze the data. In the recent years, drawn by the challenges of plant genome data analysis, Bent has further developed in the field of plant genomics and established the Amazon Rainforest Genome Ontology project (ARGO). A website with video of the project can be seen here: http://www.amazonia.life/. ARGO has the aim of sequencing all the plants in the Amazon Rainforest.

Abstract

On the Omics of Rainforests - or how bioinformaticians can save the world

Rainforests are an invaluable source of biodiversity and bio-active natural products with huge medicinal and economic potential. Because of their unique and still largely unstudied biodiversity, rainforests, therefore, represent a treasure of complex plant compounds with the ability to cure diseases and improve our food products. Unfortunately, this fact is also a threat to an already endangered biome - many plants known for their medicinal compounds are already threatened with extinction. But how can the rainforest countries benefit from this rich natural resource without threatening its existence? By using a combination of modern powerful technologies, like Cloud Supercomputing, Omics, and Artificial Intelligence - bioinformaticians can explore and preserve the rainforest's incredible biodiversity and genetic wealth before it is too late … www.amazonia.life