Workshop in Biomedical Data Science

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Workshop in Biomedical Data Science

Thursdays 1:30 – 2:50PM Li Ka Shing Center (Room: LKSC 130) 

This weekly workshop (running during Fall, Winter and Spring quarters) offers the opportunity to explore in depth the quantitative challenges that emerge from the analysis of biomedical data.
The seminar has been running continuously since the School of Medicine moved to the Stanford campus at the end of the 50s, facilitating the research interactions between medical doctors and faculty in the Schools of Humanities and Science and of Engineering.  Known as “Biostatistics workshop,” and run with dedication by faculty as Richard Olshen, it established a culture that strongly values inquisitiveness and rigor as a basis for cross-disciplinary interactions. This is reflected in the format, which reserves 20 minutes for robust discussion, around coffee and cookies.
The workshop doubles as a class (BMDS 280A,B,C). Enrolled students need to document attendance and, if they wish to receive two unit credits,  they must write an essay summarizing one of the seminars and discussing it critically in the context of the background readings.
Suggestions and self-nominations for seminar speakers and topics are welcome: please contact Anna Kaur at kauram@stanford.edu.

Spring 2026 Schedule

Date: 4/02/2026
Speaker: Fei Jiang
Title: More info here

Date: 4/09/2026
Speaker: Possu Huang
Title: More info here

Date: 4/16/2026
Speaker: Danyu Lin
Title: More info here


Date: 4/23/2026
Speaker: Ying Qing Chen
Title: On Measuring Functional Attribution in Disease Prevention Research
More info here


Date: 4/30/2026
Speaker: Leah Dorman
Title: Extracting the secrets of the infected cell: Multiomic characterization of host responses during infection by Zika and Dengue virus
More info here

Date: 5/07/2026
Speaker: Mohammad Shahrokh Esfahani
Title: Inferring transcriptional activity from circulating DNA molecules
More info here

Date: 5/14/2026
Speaker: Marc Lipsitch
Title: Estimating the effects of interventions on epidemics: Theory for vaccines and prospects for addressing the question seriously for nonpharmaceutical interventions during COVID-19.

Date: 5/21/2026
Speaker: Sesh Mudumbai
Title: Predicting Opioid Trajectories After Surgery: Interpretable AI Under Real-World Constraints

Date: 5/28/2026
Speaker: Adam Siepel
Title: Variational Inference with Node Embeddings (VINE) for scalable Bayesian phylogenetics