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I am
Research Fellow in the Computational Biology and Functional Genomics
Laboratory, headed by Professor John Quackenbush, at the Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute, Harvard School of Public Health. My primary research
interests concern the development and application of machine learning
algorithms to analyze high-throughput genomic data in biomedicine,
mostly in cancer studies. My ultimate goal is to translate my findings
into the clinic, thus really affecting patients' lives. I am currently
working on extending network inference from gene expression data to
predict the complex behavior of biological systems such as the response
of multiple targeted anticancer therapies. My long-term research
focuses on the integration of high-throughput data from various sources
(DNA, RNA, methylation or proteins) to analyze simultaneously multiple
facets of carcinogenesis; next-generation sequencing technologies are
particularly promising to leverage the data required to achieve this
goal. I was awarded a prestigious Fulbright grant-in-aid for my
postdoctoral research (2009-2010).
Prior to joining Professor Quackenbush's laboratory, I earned my PhD in
bioinformatics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium
(2005-2009). I worked both in the Machine Learning Group (ULB), headed
by Professor Gianluca Bontempi, and the Breast Cancer Translational
Research Laboratory (Institut Jules Bordet, Belgium), headed by
Professor Christos Sotiriou. In my doctoral work, I gained exposure to
biomedical research which, combined with my background in computer
science, allowed me to develop novel methodologies for prognostication
of breast cancer patients using gene expression profiling. My
interdisciplinary contributions have brought new insights in biological
processes critical to a patient's clinical outcome and have been
published both in top bioinformatics journals such as Bioinformatics,
Genome Biol, PNAS, and BMC Genomics, and clinical journals such as Nat
Med, Lancet Oncol, J Natl Cancer Inst, J Clin Oncol, Clin Cancer Res
and Breast Cancer Res. I received a distinguished Solvay award for my
doctoral research in 2010.
As a native of Brussels, Belgium, I received my degree in computer
science at ULB. I consequently earned a master degree both in
bioinformatics (2004) and advanced studies in science (2005) from ULB.
Accomplished in interdisciplinary challenges I have gained broad
expertise over the years in machine learning and bioinformatics,
as well as in oncology and translational research.
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