Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2009
The following list includes all presentations given at the Faculty Summit that relate to the theme of health and wellbeing. Topics range from mobile solutions and sensors for healthcare to interpreting genetic information.
On This Page
- Mobile Solutions for Underserved Communities
- Computational Challenges of Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS)
- Using Genomics to Understand Neurological Disease
- Improving Detection in Large-Scale Genetic Association Studies by Discovering and Accounting for Race, Relatedness, and Other Hidden Relationships
- GeneScription: An Information Management System for Enabling Pharmacogenomics and Drug Safety Assurance
- Systems Biology and Transformative Healthcare
- Devices, Sensors, and Mobility for Healthcare
Mobile Solutions for Underserved Communities
Moderator: Kristin Tolle, Microsoft Research
This session focuses on sustainable solutions that will help solve the healthcare crisis in emerging and developing economies.
Webcast: Mobile Solutions for Underserved Communities
Transformational Improvement in Healthcare
David Zar, Washington University in St. Louis
Approximately 75 percent of the world population has no access to medical imaging. Most of those people are poor and many live in remote areas, far from modern medical facilities. By taking advantage of the computing capabilities of modern smart phones, real-time, ultrasonic imaging may be introduced to these people and at very low cost. Using commercially available USB-based ultrasound probes and developing drivers and applications that run on Windows Mobile smart phones, many underserved areas of the world may now have access to modern medical imaging.
Presentation: David Zar, Transformational Improvement in Healthcare
Basic Mobile Technology for Basic Support
Michael Platt, Microsoft
There is still much that can be done to support underserved communities with mobile technologies to which they already have access. This presentation examines how the huge numbers of mobile phones has been utilized as a delivery mechanism for cloud computing to provide dynamic and personalized support to the bottom of the pyramid.
Presentation: Michael Platt, Basic Mobile Technology for Basic Support
Use Smart Phones to Promote Diabetes Self-management for Robust Elderly in China
Jiao (Maggie) Ma and Cynthia LeRouge
This presentation provides an overview of how User-Centered Design (UCD) is being applied in design and prototyping of an age and culturally appropriate, interactive diabetes self-management support system on smart phones—Chinese Aged Diabetic Assistant (CADA). CADA uses a gaming approach to engage and inspire robust (independent in activities of daily living) elder populations with diabetes in China.
Presentations: Maggie Ma, Cynthia LeRouge, Use Smart Phones to Promote Diabetes Self-management for Robust Elderly in China
Computational Challenges of Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS)
Moderator: Simon Mercer, Microsoft Research
This session describes several approaches used in association with GWAS that facilitate time to discovery.
Using Genomics to Understand Neurological Disease
Bryan Traynor, National Institutes of Health
The presentation outlines the tremendous advances that have been made in genomics in the last five years, and demonstrates how we have used these technologies to begin to unravel neurological diseases. The audience should come away with a sense of the potential of genomics, both now and in the very near future.
Improving Detection in Large-Scale Genetic Association Studies by Discovering and Accounting for Race, Relatedness, and Other Hidden Relationships
Jennifer Listgarten, Microsoft Research
The goal of genome-wide association studies is to uncover associations between disease and genetics by looking at genetic markers in large populations of individuals with and without the disease. In the statistical analysis of such studies, the ability to capture and effectively deal with various types of population structure (for example, race structure, family structure, and unknown relatedness) is critical to the discovery of genetic markers of disease. Such structure is known to be a significant confounding factor, leading to loss of power and spurious results when not properly accounted for. However, finding models that automatically account for multiple types of structure, when the presence or nature of this structure is unknown, remains an open area of research. We are investigating the use of statistical models that automatically learn and correct for these hidden factors, even when their presence is not originally known, and also without the need to remove subsets of individuals as is often done.
Presentation: Jennifer Listgarten, Improving Detection in GWAS by Discovering and Accounting for Race, Relatedness, and Other Hidden Relationships
GeneScription: An Information Management System for Enabling Pharmacogenomics and Drug Safety Assurance
Michael Kane, Purdue University
The presentation describes the rationale, development, and utility of a software system (GeneScription) developed specifically to provide training to healthcare professionals in the field of pharmacogenomics by using an operational model. The audience derives an introduction to pharmacogenomics (which is distinct from the use of genomics for disease prediction), as well as an emerging clinical arena dependent upon the successful integration of computing and information management, clinical genomics, pharmacotherapeutics, and the issues surrounding patient privacy.
Presentation: Michael Kane, GeneScription: An Information Management System for Enabling Pharmacogenomics and Drug Safety Assurance
Systems Biology and Transformative Healthcare
Moderator: Simon Mercer, Microsoft Research
This session investigates the role of computing in the fields of biological sciences and health care.
Webcast: Systems Biology and Transformative Healthcare
Systems Biology and Biotechnology of Microorganisms: Making Systems Biology Work
Sang Yup Lee, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Systems biology has been changing the paradigm of biological and biotechnological research. It is now possible to perform so-called systems metabolic engineering by integrating metabolic engineering with systems biology. This lecture presents the general strategies for systems metabolic engineering and several examples on the production of various bioproducts. Systems metabolic engineering can be considered as one of the success stories of systems biology, and will become an essential strategy for developing various microbial processes for the production of chemicals and materials, thus helping us to move into sustainable bio-based economy.
Presentation: Sang Yup Lee, Systems Biology and Biotechnology of Microorganisms: Making Systems Biology Work
Interpreting Personalized Genetic Information
Trey Ideker, University of California
Although genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are rapidly increasing in number, numerous challenges persist in identifying and explaining the associations between loci and quantitative phenotypes. This project is developing tools to integrate gene association data with protein network information to identify the pathways underlying a patient’s genotype. These methods will elevate the study of gene association to a new study of “pathway association.” The project is a joint work with Richard Karp in the EECS Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Our proposed solution is to explain the associations captured by GWAS in terms of known gene and protein interactions. New technologies have provided a wealth of interaction data ranging from the proteome (protein-protein interaction networks) to the transcriptome (protein-DNA interactions) to the metabolome (metabolic pathways). We will develop computational tools that query these independent networks to identify pathways and sub-networks of interactions underlying the observed set of genome-wide associations. This framework is intended to improve the power of current GWAS, by identifying genes in loci with borderline significance that nonetheless have close network proximity to significant genes. Furthermore, it will provide a list of putative physical pathways incorporating the causal genes necessary to affect the phenotype.
Presentation: Trey Ideker, Pathway Association Analysis
Devices, Sensors, and Mobility for Healthcare
Moderator: Kristin Tolle, Microsoft Research
This session focuses on innovative technologies in the devices sensors and mobile space being developed by Microsoft Researchers and their external collaborators.
Webcast: Devices, Sensors, and Mobility for Healthcare
Physiological Computing for Human-Computer Interaction and Medical Sensing
Desney Tan, Microsoft Research
The human body is a complex biological machine and a prolific signal generator. Recent advances in sensing technologies have vastly augmented our ability to decode the signals generated by the body. This talk presents research into utilizing sensors placed on or in the human body in order to create natural and always-available interaction with computers around us. The talk also includes discussion of recent efforts in applying our expertise to build sensors and design experiences centered on medical sensing.
Presentation: Desney Tan, Enhancing Human-Computer Interaction with Physiological Computing
Monitoring and Diagnosing Sleep Apnea in the Home
Kristin Tolle, Microsoft Research
This talk focuses on technology being developed in the Microsoft Research hardware team to help diagnoses sleep apnea and other sleeping disturbances. For proper diagnosis, patients typically must check into a sleep clinic (hospital) for monitoring. By reinstrumenting many of the sensors used in this controlled environment into a neck cuff, we posit that we can generate accurate predictions of sleep apnea (and with multiple data points) in the comfort of a subject's home.
Presentation: Kristin Tolle, Using the Ubiquity of the Cell Phone to Record Physiological Activities
MAUI: Mobile Assistance Using the Internet
Victor Bahl, Microsoft Research
Seamless augmentation of human cognition requires processing and energy that far outstrips the capabilities of mobile hardware. The CPU, memory, I/O, and energy demands of new world applications greatly exceed the capacity of devices that people are willing to carry or wear for extended periods. On such hardware, improving size, weight, and battery life are higher priorities than enhancing compute power. A mobile device can never be too small, too light, or have too long a battery life! This is not just a temporary limitation of current technology, but is intrinsic to mobility. At any given cost and level of technology, considerations of weight, power, size, and ergonomics will exact a penalty in computational resources. Computation on mobile devices will always be a compromise. Cloud computing suggests an obvious solution: Run the application on a distant high-performance computer or compute cluster and access it over the Internet via a mobile computer. Unfortunately, long WAN latencies hurt the crisp interaction that is so critical for seamless augmentation of human cognition. Humans are acutely sensitive to delay and jitter, and it is very difficult to control these parameters at WAN scale. As latency increases and bandwidth drops, interactive response suffers. This distracts the user, and reduces his or her depth of cognitive engagement.
Presentation: Victor Bahl, Mobile Assistance Using the Internet
