
Professor Jean Yang
Professor Jean Yang
Professor Yang is a statistician from the Faculty of Science whose research is focused on developing methods and applying statistics to solve problems in biomedical research.
She has been awarded a $US194,000 ($294,000) grant to create a platform that helps researchers in the field of single-cell biology compare and analyse large datasets from multiple samples and conditions, such as different patients or tissue samples.
This will contribute to molecular medicine and cancer research by understanding disease mechanisms.
With the rapid growth of single-cell research and the increasing volume of data being generated, Professor Yang said the platform will provide a gold standard to evaluate and choose the best methods for analysing data.
“Scientists globally are now generating data that carry critical information, with important clinical and public health applications, but they are often overwhelmed by too many options and a steep learning curve when deciding the best analytical approaches for their comparative analysis,” Professor Yang said.
“This project aims to develop a platform with a living benchmark to evaluate methods for comparative analytics, and to provide analytical choice when handling data involving multiple samples and multiple conditions.
“With the volume of multi-sample data expected to rise in the coming years, we will see the emergence of new analytical workflows and methods for performing comparative analyses between different groups of single-cell data – creating a new data analytics challenge.
“I am grateful to CZI for awarding me this funding and truly excited about the opportunity it presents. Their recognition of the importance of comprehensive comparison of the methods available to researchers sends a strong message about their support for both biomedical data science and reproducible science.”