New Faculty Member Apointed at NIMML
Blacksburg, VA, September 8, 2014—Virginia Bioinformatics Institute is pleased to welcome Dr. Vida Abedi as a faculty member of the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medcine Laboratory (NIMML), beggining fall 2014. Dr. Abedi is an Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
Joining us from the University of Memphis, Dr. Abedi brings to the NIMML a specialized research portfolio that includes a text analytics tool called ARIANA (Adaptive Robust and Integrative Analysis for finding Novel Associations).
“Investigation of the behavior of complex systems would greatly benefit from a multi-faceted approach. A multi-scale model that accurately captures direct and indirect interdependencies among elements, will place molecules of interest in the context of new pathways, leading to generation of new modeling-derived hypotheses to be tested in experimental models.” said Abedi. “ARIANA is a scalable and customizable technology capable of extracting direct as well as indirect associations among traits. ARIANA can help generate new hypotheses and accelerate knowledge discovery in specialized fields such as immunology.”
Tools like ARIANA will play an important role in the creation of multi-scale models of immunoregulatory processes occurring during autoimmune inflammation, or infection. Multi-scale modeling, which has been used with great success in fields like physics or computer engineering, has become important to future discoveries in biomedicine. ARIANA will help interpret these innovative computational models by generating hypotheses about potential new drug targets and biomarkers.
“Dr. Abedi’s addition to the NIMML team will provide a wealth of experience and knowledge in bioinformatics and computational modeling of biological processes. Vida’s work in applying engineering and mathematics approaches to studying biological systems will be invaluable to building the next generation of multi-scale models. This important new appointment highlights NIMML’s strong commitment to leading the implementation of bioinformation systems approaches in personalized medicine applications. We are convinced that Vida, as part of the NIMML team, will play a key role in advancing MIEP’s computational immunology programs,” said Josep Bassaganya-Riera, Director of NIMML and Professor at Virginia Bioinformatics Institute.
Abedi obtained her PhD in computer engineering and her MS in bioinformatics from University of Memphis. In addition, she has an MS in cellular molecular medicine and a BA of Science in computer engineering as well as a BS in biochemistry from University of Ottawa. Her research interests are to use tools and techniques from engineering and mathematics to better understand biological systems.
The Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (NIMML) conducts translational research aimed at developing novel therapeutic and prophylactic approaches for modulating immune and inflammatory responses. The Laboratory has over 20 researchers and combines computational modeling, bioinformatics approaches, pre-clinical experimentation, and human clinical studies to better understand the mechanisms of immune regulation at mucosal surfaces and ultimately accelerate the development of novel treatments for infectious and immune-mediated diseases. In addition, the NIMML team leads the NIAID-funded Center for Modeling Immunity to Enteric Pathogens (MIEP).
About NIMML
The NIMML Institute is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit public charity foundation focused on a transdisciplinary, team-science approach to precision medicine at the interface of immunology, inflammation, and metabolism. The NIMML Institute team has led numerous large-scale transdisciplinary projects and is dedicated to solving important societal problems by combining the expertise of immunologists, computational biologists, toxicologists, modelers, translational researchers, and molecular biologists. The Institute is headquartered in Blacksburg, VA. For more information, please visit www.nimml.org or contact pio@nimml.org.
