OCTOBER MEETING: Thursday, October 30, 2025 at 5:30pm (US Central)

LOCATION:
In person: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
600 Foster Steet, Evanston Campus

AGENDA:
5:30pm - Meet and greet with refreshments
6:00pm - Talk with Buduka Ogonor, Motter Group, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Center for Network Dynamics

TALK TITLE:
Finding gene sets underlying complex phenotypes via generative modeling

ABSTRACT:
Most human traits are complex, that is, they emerge from the interactions among multiple genes. The sheer number of possible gene set-to-phenotype mappings makes it challenging to identify the gene sets underlying complex traits using statistical approaches like genome and transcriptome-wide association studies. Furthermore, these existing approaches assume that molecular-level changes are independent, which is at odds with the existence of intracellular networks that govern cell behavior.

Here, we present an approach that identifies gene set-to-phenotype relationships that leverages generative modeling trained on publicly available transcriptional data. We use a generative model—dubbed TWAVE for Transcription-Wide Variational Auto-Encoder—to emulate diseased and healthy transcriptional states. Then, we use existing transcriptional measurements of responses to turning genes on and off as inputs to an optimization framework, which identifies the gene perturbations that minimize the transcriptional difference between the diseased and healthy states. Using nine disease traits as examples, we show that the approach identifies causal genes that cannot be detected by the primary existing techniques. We suggest that the approach be used to design tailored experiments to identify multi-genic targets to address complex diseases.

DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly meetings featuring presentations and discussions about data-driven science and complex systems, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Students and researchers of all levels are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn

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Speaker:

Julio M. Ottino, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University

Title:

From Clocks to Clouds: The Complexity Revolution: How Scientific Breakthroughs Reshaped Reality and Our Place Within It

Abstract:

For three centuries, Western thought was guided by a Newtonian worldview: the universe as a vast clock, predictable and controllable. That vision has unraveled. Scientific revolutions—from relativity and quantum mechanics to evolution, game theory, and complexity science—have revealed a world of uncertainty, emergence, and creative interconnection. We now inhabit a “cloud world,” where relationships matter more than parts, and uncertainty is not ignorance but potential. This talk traces the transformation from clocks to complexity, showing how these revolutions reshape our understanding of reality and what it means to navigate knowledge, organizations, and society in turbulent times.

Speaker Bio:

Julio M. Ottino is an engineering scientist recognized for his work in fluid dynamics, chaos and nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, and especially mixing. He was born in La Plata, Argentina and grew up with twin interests in the physical sciences and visual arts. He obtained his first degree at the University of La Plata, in Argentina, before receiving a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota. He is currently at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science in Northwestern University where he holds the titles of Robert R. McCormick Institute Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He is also a professor of Management and Organizations at Kellogg School of Management. He was the co-founder and director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO) and the author of the Kinematics of Mixing: Stretching, Chaos, and Transport (Cambridge University Press 1989) and The Nexus, Augmented Thinking for a Complex World, with Bruce Mau (MIT Press, 2022).

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/99053647199
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.

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Speaker:

Blaise Agüera y Arcas, VP/Fellow, CTO of Technology & Society, Google

Title:

Symbiogenesis, Computational Parallelism, and Complexity in Evolution

Abstract:

Symbiogenesis-- the fusion of formerly independent self-replicating entities into a larger self-replicating entity-- is proposed as the driving force behind evolution's "arrow of time" toward ever-increasing complexity. We'll explore an Artificial Life system as a minimal motivating example, then discuss the implications for biological evolution beyond the "standard" accounts of Major Evolutionary Transitions and "intelligence explosions" in brainy species. Energetic and computational implications will also be addressed.

Speaker Bio:

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP and Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society and founder of Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi). Pi is an organization working on fundamental research in AI and related fields, especially the foundations of neural computing, active inference, sociality, evolution, and Artificial Life.

In 2008, Blaise was awarded MIT’s TR35 prize. During his tenure at Google, Blaise has innovated on-device machine learning for Android and Pixel; invented Federated Learning, an approach to decentralized model training that avoids sharing private data; and founded the Artists + Machine Intelligence program.

An External Professor at Santa Fe Institute and a frequent public speaker, Blaise has given multiple TED talks and keynoted NeurIPS. He has also authored numerous papers, essays, op-eds, and chapters, as well as two previous books, Who Are We Now? and Ubi Sunt. His most recent book, What Is Life?, is part 1 of the larger book What Is Intelligence?, forthcoming from Antikythera and MIT Press in September 2025.

Location:

In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/98741396308
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.

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NOVEMBER MEETING: Thursday, November 20, 2025 at 5:30pm (US Central)

LOCATION:
In person: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
600 Foster Steet, Evanston Campus

AGENDA:
5:30pm - Meet and greet with refreshments
6:00pm - Talk with Feihong Xu, Amaral Lab, ESAM

Talk title and abstract TBA.

DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly meetings featuring presentations and discussions about data-driven science and complex systems, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Students and researchers of all levels are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn

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DECEMBER MEETING: Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 5:30pm (US Central)

LOCATION:
In person: Chambers Hall, Lower Level
600 Foster Steet, Evanston Campus

AGENDA:
5:30pm - Meet and greet with refreshments
6:00pm - Talk with Yash Chainani, Broadbelt & Tyo Labs, Chemical Engineering

Talk title and abstract TBA.

DATA SCIENCE NIGHTS are monthly meetings featuring presentations and discussions about data-driven science and complex systems, organized by Northwestern University graduate students and scholars. Students and researchers of all levels are welcome! For more information: http://bit.ly/nico-dsn

Related Info