Former grad student Christopher Gillies publishes in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics

Recent OU graduate Christopher Gillies is the lead author on a paper in the December issue of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics. Last August, Gillies earned his PhD in Computer Science and Informatics under the direction of CBR member Mohammad-Reza Siadat, of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Gillies is truly a product of Oakland University, obtaining his BS in 2009 and MS in 2011 at OU before ultimately earning his PhD in 2013. His dissertation was titled “Investigating the Efficacy of Incorporating Gene Semantic Similarity into Gene Expression Analysis”.

Gillies' article A Simulation to Analyze Feature Selection Methods Utilizing Gene Ontology for Gene Expression Classification (Volume 46, Pages 1044-1059) was also coauthored by Associate Professor Nilesh Patel, of the Dept. Computer Science and Engineering, and Dr. George Wilson, the Scientific Director of the Biobank at Beaumont Hospital. The ultimate goal of the study is to find biomarkers that will allow a more personalized approach to medicine. The paper begins

"A major transformation is occurring within the health-care community. Instead of applying general treatments to diverse patient populations, therapies are being customized to patient sub-populations based on their gene expression profiles. This new form of medical practice is known as personalized medicine. Gene expression profile classification is subfield of bioinformatics that is aiding in the transformation to personalized medicine. Gene expression profiling is an important tool for personalized medicine because it allows biomedical researchers to discover biomarkers."