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Machine Learning, Data Topology, Biomedical Datasets - Krishnaswamy Lab at Yale School of Medicine

June 29, 2026

Transcript

  • 00:04Let's say we take a
  • 00:05drop of your blood that
  • 00:07has, you know, thousands and
  • 00:08thousands
  • 00:09of cells.
  • 00:10If you think about visualizing
  • 00:11the cells, they actually exist
  • 00:13in some kind of a
  • 00:14hundred dimensional space. Right? But
  • 00:16they don't take up all
  • 00:17this space.
  • 00:18So they take up narrow
  • 00:20niches within this high dimensional
  • 00:22space. It forms a low
  • 00:23dimensional manifold. You can think
  • 00:25of a two d piece
  • 00:26of paper in three d
  • 00:27space. It's forming a lower
  • 00:29dimensional manifold, and it solves
  • 00:31a lot of the challenges
  • 00:32in single cell data if
  • 00:33you tried to explicitly model
  • 00:34that lower dimensional shape or
  • 00:35manifold that the cells reside
  • 00:37in.
  • 00:41My lab focuses on developing
  • 00:43novel machine learning, deep learning,
  • 00:46and general AI techniques
  • 00:48that are a lot of
  • 00:49times either motivated by or
  • 00:52specifically designed for,
  • 00:54analysis and insight from biomedical
  • 00:56data, from sequencing machines, from
  • 00:59imaging,
  • 01:00from other kinds of specialized
  • 01:03technology that can measure things
  • 01:05like brain activity, cellular activity.
  • 01:07So there's been a lot
  • 01:08of this kind of data
  • 01:09generated in biology that
  • 01:11needs to be analyzed that
  • 01:13could give us new insights
  • 01:14that can accelerate discovery.
  • 01:19We develop
  • 01:20a class of methods that
  • 01:22we call sort of geometric
  • 01:24topological
  • 01:26deep learning methods. These are
  • 01:28kinda like your normal neural
  • 01:29networks that are used to
  • 01:30build anything else, but we
  • 01:32infuse them with a lot
  • 01:33of very specific specific kinds
  • 01:34of
  • 01:35math that's very important in
  • 01:37biology. So geometry is something
  • 01:39that we use a lot.
  • 01:40Geometry happens to be really
  • 01:41important in all parts of
  • 01:42biology, including
  • 01:43shapes of molecules.
  • 01:46A molecule has a certain
  • 01:47kind of geometry, and if
  • 01:48it didn't have that, it
  • 01:50couldn't bind to another molecule
  • 01:52or perform its proper function.
  • 01:54And then topology is a
  • 01:56way of numerically characterizing
  • 01:59different geometries.
  • 02:00We also
  • 02:01infused a lot of them
  • 02:03with dynamic systems capabilities. So
  • 02:05these will be neural networks
  • 02:06that can implicitly learn a
  • 02:08dynamic system that can generate
  • 02:09things like trajectories
  • 02:11and forecast what happens to
  • 02:13cells and molecules, for example.
  • 02:15So these kind of,
  • 02:18mathematically enriched neural networks are
  • 02:20able to learn more scientifically
  • 02:22precise information than the ones
  • 02:24that are used out in
  • 02:25social media or in other
  • 02:27parts of the world.
  • 02:31Some prominent areas where we
  • 02:33have active grants with a
  • 02:34lot of collaborators are cancer,
  • 02:36including breast cancer and colorectal
  • 02:38cancer,
  • 02:39immunology,
  • 02:41where we're developing large models
  • 02:43that predict immunogenicity,
  • 02:46neuroscience,
  • 02:47where we're looking both at
  • 02:49stem cell development into different
  • 02:51neuronal lineages as well as
  • 02:53the more neural activity work.
  • 02:55Yale is actually unusually well
  • 02:57suited for this because you
  • 02:59can be at the intersection
  • 03:00of all these fields very
  • 03:01easily at Yale. So I
  • 03:02really love, you know, math
  • 03:03and computer science and these
  • 03:05kinds of things, and I
  • 03:06really wanted to,
  • 03:08impact
  • 03:08a scientific discovery, biology, medicine,
  • 03:11these kinds of things.