SUNY Distinguished Professor Thomas Begley says his favorite part of research is solving puzzles. “I like to take complex data and find patterns in it, that’s really fulfilling for me.”
Working in his lab at the RNA Institute, the University at Albany researcher studies how organisms respond to stress – an underlying cause of many diseases. The need to analyze over 100,000 RNAs led to the development of a new software tool that simplifies big data. The innovation has applications in studying disease biology and advancing new treatments.
“Biology, biomedical sciences, and pharmaceutical science is big data science these days,” Begley explains. “Taking billions of data points and being able to boil it down to a finite answer is really what the software does.”
The SUNY Technology Accelerator Fund supported this project in multiple ways. The TAF team provided training and assistance in planning the project and the research team was connected to experienced people who helped them learn about commercialization. TAF funding is being used to pay for people to further develop the technology and to hire consultants for needed feedback.
“A big inspiration for me is bringing an idea from the lab to the marketplace,” said Begley. “Personalized medicine is already here for a number of cancer-based therapeutics. As we can handle more of the big data and understand what it means, this emerging approach to healthcare will get even better.”
Professor Begley tells us more about his work and explains the importance of data science in medical research in the video below:
