Frontiers Conference at the University of Pittsburgh

University of Pittsburgh researchers play a leading role in a White House conference, co-hosted by Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, on the future of innovation.

Greg Cooper

  • Professor, Department of Biomedical Informatics, of Computational and Systems Biology, and of Intelligent Systems
  • Director, Center for Causal Discovery

Biography

Cooper’s research involves developing, investigating, and evaluating new modeling and algorithmic techniques that make Bayesian biosurveillance practical for real-time monitoring and diagnosing of the disease-outbreak status of an entire population to provide early, reliable detection of outbreaks of disease, whether natural or bioterrorist induced. Early detection of these outbreaks allows for the best possible medical response and treatment and improves the chances of identifying the source.

As an inaugural member of the NIH Big Data to Knowledge Consortium, the Center for Causal Discovery will develop highly efficient causal discovery algorithms that can be practically applied to very large biomedical datasets including algorithms that help discover the cell-signaling pathways that drive cancer development, molecular basis of lung-disease susceptibility and progression, and functional connections within the human brain. Those are big goals that can only be achieved by learning better how to analyze Big Data.