Office of the
Executive Vice President and Provost

2007-2008 University Distinguished Lecture Series

Title: Genomic Signal Processing: The Key to Systems Medicine

Edward R. Dougherty, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
International Society of Optical Engineering Fellow
Holder of the Robert M. Kennedy 26 Chair in Electrical Engineering
Texas A&M University

April 15, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Auditorium, Annenberg Presidential Conference Center
Texas A&M University

About the Speaker

Edward R. Dougherty is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, where he holds the Robert M. Kennedy Chair and is director of the Genomic Signal Processing Laboratory. He is also the director of the Computational Biology Division of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, and adjunct professor in the Department of Pathology of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University and received the Doctor Honoris Causa from the Tampere University of Technology in Finland. He is a fellow of the International Society of Optical Engineering (SPIE) and has received the SPIE President's Award. At Texas A&M he has received The Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Research and been named Fellow of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station and Halliburton Professor of the Dwight Look College of Engineering. He is author of 14 books and more than 200 journal papers, and has edited 5 books. His current research in genomic signal processing is aimed at modeling gene regulatory networks to develop therapies based on the disruption or mitigation of aberrant gene function contributing to the pathology of a disease.

Abstract

We are entering the era of systems medicine. Rather than be given a drug that targets the whole population, or some large segment of the population, a patient's individual genetic make-up will be used to provide a drug that yields the best personalized prognosis. But this is only the beginning. Beyond prognosis, the future holds treatment strategies based on the network of relations between the genes and proteins that regulate the overall function of the cell, both its maintenance and reproduction. This genomic approach has two benefits: first, it goes behind macroscopic tissue analysis to the genetic alterations causing the disease; second, a systems approach will be smart, taking into account the effects of treatment on the cell as a whole, not simply on the obvious manifestations of the disease. All of this will depend on processing genomic signals passed between genes and proteins. Systems medicine will require systems engineering. Your physician's diagnosis and treatment will be backed by complex mathematical systems and the supercomputers needed to solve them. Engineering holds the key to uniting biology, mathematics, and computation. Engineering and medical researchers are currently forming the new and exciting collaborations necessary to reach this end.

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