ISBI Daily - Friday

they ought to try to quantify it in some way and be more concrete about the findings they see. That’s a cultural shift. The technical shift, by far the most dramatic thing that has happened is the impact of deep learning entering biomedicine. That’s been a quite sudden and quite dramatic shift that so far is mostly still at the proof-of-principle stage. We’ve mostly seen papers that show that something is possible, but most of the tools and developments in deep learning so far are not actually being used day-to-day by biologists yet. That’s really the mission of my lab – to translate new computational methods into everyday use by biologists. If you could choose one disease that your work could help bring about a dramatic improvement in, what would it be? That’s a super interesting question! This is what I am here for! Good point! [ laughs ] If I can define it broadly, I would say psychiatric disease. By comparison to so many other disorders, the mechanisms and underpinnings of psychiatric disease are so much less well known. The treatments that we have available are so dramatically underwhelming and the proportion of people affected by them is so dramatically increasing. To me, it seems like the area that is most in need of some dramatic changes and dramatic improvements. You have already achieved so much in your career to date, but if you could point to one innovation that your lab has made that you can already see having an impact in the field, what would it be? Anne Carpenter ISBI DAILY Friday 9 “ The mechanisms and underpinnings of psychiatric disease are so much less well known. […] To me, it seems like the area that is most in need of some dramatic changes and dramatic improvements. ” Photo: Janice Sandler