Artificial intelligence is driving a significant shift in the life sciences and medicine. Thanks to its leading position in the provision of high-quality databases and software tools, SIB has the potential to be a driving force in this shift. That's why SIB launched a call for projects in March 2022 to bring added value to the scientific impact of SIB Resources, while proposing innovative technologies that will benefit the scientific community.
Five projects among the many submitted were selected after a three-step process: 1) qualitative assessment of each project by a panel of 3-4 reviewers; 2) ranking based on the reviewers' comments by Carlos Pena and Fabio Rinaldi, two eminent experts of AI/ML at SIB; 3) selection based on the experts' recommendations and SIB’s strategic orientation by the representatives of Group Leaders on the SIB Board of Directors, Katja Baerenfaller and Robert Waterhouse. The selected projects are:
- The Missing Link: AI augmentation of SIB RDF knowledge graphs - Christophe Dessimoz and Christian von Mering groups – Resources: STRING and OMA
- The Protein Universe Atlas - Employing deep learning to model the landscape of the protein universe - Torsten Schwede group – Resources: SWISS-MODEL, UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, and SwissOrthology
- Development of a new machine learning-based scoring function to predict the damaging effect of mutations on protein structures - Olivier Michielin & Vincent Zoete and Clinical Bioinformatics groups – Resource: SwissDrugDesign
- Pilot implementation of annotation of single-cell RNA-Seq data guided by AI - Marc Robinson-Rechavi & Frédéric Bastian, Bart Deplancke, and Mark Robinson groups – Resources: Bgee and ASAP
- Use of transformers to assist cell line biocuration - Amos Bairoch & Lydie Lane and Patrick Ruch groups – Resource: Cellosaurus
Congratulations to the successful applicants and thanks to all those involved in the process! For more information, please contact Severine Duvaud, Resource Usability & Support.