Events
Past Event
Data Science Nights - JANUARY 2022 Meeting (Speaker: Qian Cao, U.S. Food and Drug Administration)
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
5:15 PM
Details

JANUARY MEETING: Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 5:15pm (US Central) via Zoom.
DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly talks on data science techniques or applications, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Aspiring, beginning, and advanced data scientists are welcome!
AGENDA:
5:15: Data Science Night Meet & Greet on Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/97300898035
5:30: Presentation by Qian Cao on Zoom
6:00: Post-talk coding on Gather Town
SPEAKER: Qian Cao, Visiting Scientist, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
TITLE: Turning a bone imaging research project into a job at the FDA
ABSTRACT: 1 in 5 American women over age 50 has osteoporosis, which increases the risk of bone fracture and can lead to hospitalizations and premature death in older people. Assessment of bone fragility is a key part of staging and management of osteoporosis. Bone mineral density (BMD) is commonly used for evaluating fracture risk and can be measured by quantitative computed tomography (CT) or dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). However, bone fragility also depends on both mineral distribution and microstructure. Therefore, recent efforts have emphasized characterization of bone microarchitecture (or bone texture) as a basis for more reliable estimates of fragility and disease progression. I will briefly discuss my research in measurement of bone microstructure and development of texture biomarkers in CT. I will also discuss my experience as a research fellow at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
BIO: Qian Cao is a Visiting Scientist at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) where he works on projects involving assessment of bone health. He completed his PhD in 2020 in the Dept of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where he developed new 3D imaging and reconstruction methods to visualize bone at higher resolution, as well as new analysis methods. Following graduation, he worked at the FDA for almost a year as a research fellow on developing texture biomarkers for the assessment of bone health.
For more info: data-science-nights.org
Supporting Groups:
This event is supported by the Northwestern Institute for Complex Systems and the Northwestern Data Science Initiative.
Time
Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 5:15 PM - 7:30 PM
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Lightning Talks w/ Northwestern Scholars!
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Speakers:
Yessica Herrera, Visiting Scholar, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Talk Title: The Body Speaks: Visual Patterns of Psychological Stress
Aakriti Kumar, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
Talk Title: Evaluating Elements of Empathic Communication with Experts, Crowds, and Large Language Models
Tingyu "Mark" Zhao, PhD Student, Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences
Talk Title: Noise Filtering in Complex Networks
Sign Up:
Sign up to present at a future Lightning Talk session. NICO Lightning Talks are open to graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/95387714084
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Rosemary Braun, Northwestern University "The Scale of Life"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Speaker:
Rosemary Braun, Associate Professor, Department of Molecular Biosciences, Northwestern University
Title:
The Scale of Life
Abstract:
Living systems exhibit surprising and beautiful self-organization at all scales. At the atomic level, proteins self-assemble into macromolecular complexes. The function of these machines is orchestrated within the cell by regulatory networks, whose activity is in turn dictated by, and coordinated with, the cells environment. This coordination takes place across large spans of space and time: the size and lifetime of organisms as large as the blue whale. Populations and ecosystems of many organisms in turn exhibit remarkable emergent dynamics. Today, advances in single-cell assays enable us to probe the molecular state of every cell in a sample in high-dimensional detail. But is this the correct scale at which to probe living systems? What can we learn from this data, and how can we abstract from the microscopic details to macroscopic phenotypes? In this talk, I will discuss some of our recent work bridging the cell and tissue/organism scales, and discuss some challenges and opportunities for the future.
Speaker Bio:
Rosemary Braun is an Associate Professor of Molecular Biosciences, Applied Mathematics [ESAM], and Physics at Northwestern University. A theoretical physicist by training, she earned her PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois, followed by a Masters in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute (NIH) before joining Northwestern as a faculty member. Today, she works at the intersection of statistics, mathematics, and biology to develop computational tools for analyzing high-dimensional data. In addition to her Northwestern affiliations, she is also Associate Director of the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology, as well as external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/97015976754
Passcode: NICO25
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)