From Detection to Predicting Infectious Disease and Antibiotic Resistance Outcomes – BC’s Tim van Opijnen, PhD
We are excited to welcome Tim van Opijnen, PhD, an Associate Professor of Biology at Boston College and an Affiliate member of the Levy CIMAR, to present for our May 2021 Science Lunch. His talk is titled, “From Detection to Predicting Infectious Disease and Antibiotic Resistance Outcomes: Employing Experimental Evolution, Omics-Stress Mapping and Computational Biology to Determine and Predict What Matters in Antibiotic Resistance.”
Dr. van Opijnen and his lab focus on the development and application of experimental and computational Systems Biology tools to study infectious diseases as complete systems while in interaction with their environment (e.g. the host and/or drugs). The group’s ultimate goal is to develop approaches to predict and detect the emergence of (drug-resistant) infectious diseases and strategies to eradicate them. To achieve this, Dr. van Opijnen and team employ a unique mixture of approaches from the fields of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science, including a variety of sequencing strategies, microfluidics, robotic automation, immune system monitoring, in vivo disease models, computational modeling and machine learning.