Convergent Research Theme
Proof of Concept - 2023/2024
Development of Intelligent Personal Assistant platform for biomedical high-risk environment
Overview: This theme aims to design an intelligent assistant to facilitate every-day work of personnel in biomedical high-risk environment. This theme aims at developing and integrating an intelligent personal assistant (IPA) for supporting and navigating Containment Level 3 (CL3) facility users in their every-day work.
Our IPA will help to centralize and monitor inventory, equipment, and rooms biosafety conditions. AI recommendation system of IPA will analyze the exploitation of contained zone and provide recommendations to facility manager for optimizing the lifespan of CL3 equipment.
Core Team:
Jérôme Waldispüh
Computer Science, Faculty of Science
Silvia Vidal
Human Genetics, Faculty of Medicine
Elena Nazarova
Computer Science, Faculty of Science
Convergent Research Theme
Proof of Concept - 2023/2024
Updating and retrieving genetic information for plant pangenome assemblies
Overview: Creating a simple, computational system for updating and retrieving genetic information for plant pangenome assemblies with the aim to identify climate-resilient genetic traits. A genome assembly is sequence data computationally arranged into chromosome locations representing the genome of an organism. A pangenome is an assembly of all available genomic sequence data for a given species. A super pangenome goes further and includes the genomes of related species to capture as much genetic diversity as possible.
As Proof-of-Concept, we propose to create a simple computational system to update and retrieve information for super pangenome assemblies. Currently this data is too large and unwieldy to be queried in a simple way, and no appropriate viewer/query system exists for pangenomes, unlike current single genome viewers such as JBrowse. We use JBrowse with single or genome to genome comparisons, but it cannot handle pangenome assemblies, which are magnitudes larger and include many species. Yet this is what is needed to fully take advantage of the genome sequence available for the purpose of developing climate smart or climate resilient crop varieties.
Core Team:
Martina Stromvik
Plant Science, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Benoît Bizimungu
Research Scientist and Curator, Canadian Potato Gene Resources, AAFC, Fredericton, NB
Helen Tai
Research Scientist, AAFC, Fredericton, NB
Martin Lague
Computer scientist at AAFC, Fredericton, NB
Hannele Lindqvist-Kreuze
Leader of the Genetics, Genomics and Crop Improvement at International Potato Center, Lima Peru
Noelle Anglin
Research Leader, USDA-ARS, Idaho, USA
Dave Ellis
Emeritus Memeber and former Head of Genebank at International Potato Center. Lima Peru
