Second-year PhD student of Mathematical Biology, researcher Suren Davitavyan of the Institute of Molecular Biology of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia (supervisor PhD in Biological Sciences Arsen Arakelyan, Institute of Biomedicine and Pharmacy of the RAU) was declared the winner according to the results of the competition "Encouraging Scientific Publications by Young Scientists".

 

To participate in the competition, Suren Davitavyan presented the article "Integrated multi-omics maps of lower-grade gliomas" published in the international  Cancers (Basel) journal with an impact factor of 6.575 (Q1). In his work, he spoke about the method of combined analysis of multidimensional biological data based on machine learning of self-organizing maps. 

 

"Biology, like all modern science, strives for high-tech progress, accumulation and analysis of big data. Machine learning methods help solve the problem of big data analysis. We have presented an intuitive method of combined analysis of multidimensional biological data based on machine learning of self-organizing maps. The algorithm visualizes changes in expression, methylation, and copy count for all genes using the same coordinate system. This allows us to visually assess and compare the levels of gene changes in patients on an individual basis," the young scientist shared.

 

According to Suren Davitavyan, the method was applied to low-grade gliomas and heterogeneous brain tumors, and makes it possible to comprehensively characterize tumors both at the individual level and by groups.

 

"The main goal of our research is to obtain a model that can detect changes in the genome of patients leading to diseases, characterize them and find more effective treatment methods. Bioinformatics is a relatively young science, the software development of which will open up new prospects for medicine and science in Armenia," he assured.

 

It should be noted that this competition was organized by the Young Scientist Support Program.

 

 

 

Translated by Elen Minasyan,
I year Master’s Student in Translation & Interpretation, RAU