The German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin (DRFZ), a Leibniz-Institute, has a new liaison group in the Systems Rheumatology program area. MATH+ member Vikram Sunkara of Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) has been leading the “Explainable A.I. for Inflammation” research group at the DRFZ since December 2023. This group strengthens the collaboration between the DRFZ and ZIB.

Vikram Sunkara´s scientific focus is to combine pure mathematics and mathematical biology to solve deep fundamental problems in computational biology. He has already been collaborating with Mir-Farzin Mashreghi from the DRFZ for more than three years, contributing his mathematical expertise and experience in the field of artificial intelligence to combine modern mathematical biology with state-of-the-art high-throughput single-cell technologies.

Vikram Sunkara explains his plans at the DRFZ: “Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool for unraveling disease pathomechanisms and is geared towards bringing a paradigm shift in precision medicine for rheumatology.” With his new liaison group, Sunkara aims to design new A.I. architectures that will give guarantees and confidence to digital diagnosis and prognosis.

“I have a deep appreciation for the artificial intelligence algorithms Vikram Sunkara has developed at the Zuse Institute. Combining our expertise in immunology and technology with the clinical insights from the Charité liaison groups at the DRFZ, his new team can effectively implement their algorithms on high-quality data from well-characterized patients. This approach not only facilitates swift diagnosis and prognosis for patients with chronic inflammatory diseases but also allows for systematic insights into immunological processes during pathogenesis. These insights are invaluable for guiding us in the development of personalized medicine”, emphasizes Mir-Farzin Mashreghi, Deputy Scientific Director and head of the Systems Rheumatology program area at the DRFZ.

At the ZIB, Vikram Sunkara’s research is attempting to relieve the opioid crisis using mathematics and A.I. by developing mathematical theory for A.I. driven opioid discovery and reducing the side effects of opioid use, such as respiratory failure and addiction.

Within MATH+, Vikram Sunkara is actively involved in the following projects:

• AA1-15: Math-Powered Drug-Design
• AA1-19: Drug Candidates as Pareto Optima in Chemical Space
• AA1-20: Geometric Learning for Single-Cell RNA Velocity Modeling
• IN-B1: Biological Validation of Mathematically Predicted Algebraic Conditional Expectation Structures Arising in Gene Regulatory Networks

LINKS:

• Read the complete DRFZ Press Release
• More information about Vikram Sunkara at the DRFZ
• Vikram Sunkara at the Zuse Insitute Berlin (ZIB)