Event Details

Frontiers of Science

22^nd October at 12:00
Onsite event
in Presidentti auditorium, BioCity
Autumn 2026 poster

Prof. William Stafford Noble, University of Washington, USA
Making sense of genomic and proteomic data with machine learning

Host: Balazs Balint (balazs.balint@utu.fi)

Coffee and sandwich served at 11:45, first come first serve!

Six PhD researchers and early-career postdocs are welcome to have a lunch and discuss with Prof. Noble after the seminar. This is a great possibility to learn hosting skills in a friendly environment and create connections for future. Everyone is welcome to join, BioCity Turku will offer the lunch.

If you got interested, please send an email to biocityturku@bioscience.fi

Noble research group develops and applies computational techniques for modeling and understanding biological processes at the molecular level. Their research emphasizes the application of statistical and machine learning techniques, such as hidden Markov models and support vector machines. The team applies these techniques to various types of biological data, including protein and DNA sequences, data from high-throughput genomic assays such as ChIP-seq and Hi-C, and tandem mass spectrometry. Prof. Noble’s research group is currently developing methods for analyzing shotgun proteomics data, for characterizing protein function, structure and interactions, and for understanding the structure and regulatory influence of chromatin.

William Stafford Noble is a Professor in the Department of Genome Sciences and in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. He received the Ph.D. in computer science and cognitive science from University of California, San Diego in 1998. Dr. Noble’s research applies statistical and machine learning methods to the analysis of complex biological data sets. He is the author of more than 350 peer reviewed publications and has advised 39 postdoctoral fellows and 31 PhD students. William is the recipient of the International Society for Computational Biology Innovator award, the US Human Proteome Organization Gilbert S. Omenn Computational Proteomics Award, and is a Fellow and former member of the Board of Directors of the ISCB.

Selected publications

Jha A, Hristov B, Wang X, Wang S, Greenleaf WJ, Kundaje A, Aiden EL, Bertero A, Noble WS. Prediction and functional interpretation of inter-chromosomal genome architecture from DNA sequence with TwinC. Nat Commun. 2026 Apr 20. in press

Sanders J, Wen B, Rudnick PA, Johnson RS, Wu CC, Riffle M, Oh S, MacCoss MJ, Noble WS. A transformer model for de novo sequencing of data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry data. Nat Methods. 2025 Jul;22(7):1447-1453.

Sanders J, Wen B, Rudnick PA, Johnson RS, Wu CC, Riffle M, Oh S, MacCoss MJ, Noble WS. A transformer model for de novo sequencing of data-independent acquisition mass spectrometry data. Nat Methods. 2025 Jul;22(7):1447-1453.

Bittremieux W, Noble WS. Self-supervised learning from small-molecule mass spectrometry data. Nat Biotechnol. 2026 Apr;44(4):538-539.

General information

• Registration is not needed, participation list is circulated in the audience.
• If you are a student and later wish to get a certificate of attendance from the Frontier of Science seminars (BKEM1020; UTU), print out the seminar diary and after the seminar ask the BioCity coordinator to sign it https://seafile.utu.fi/d/44a70f80ac1e46a9ad0a/
• Please note that any audio or video recording of the seminars is strictly forbidden.
• Autumn 2026 image credits to Samuel Svärd: Whole mount immunofluorescent staining of the mouse retina. Image acquired on 3i CSU-W1 Spinning disk with 10x objective.