Graduate School of Informatics

Title: Optimization of Weights and Features in Use of AHP for SNP Prioritization

PhD Candidate: Arif Yılmaz

Program: Health Informatics Department Medical Informatics Program
Date: 16 January Tuesday 13:130

Place: Conference Hall-01

Abstract:

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) holds a promise in identification of genomic footprints of complex diseases such as cancer and diabetes diseases. However identification of SNPs associated to complex diseases is a challenging problem due to the high number and variety of SNPs present in individual genomes. Analysis of genome wide studies of SNP datasets mainly focus on statistical evidence.  As there are more than ten-millions of SNPs in human genome, incorporating biological and functional knowledge about statistically significant SNPs provides valuable features for further selection of SNPs. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) based SNP prioritization approach is a method developed for this purpose. However, AHP requires expert knowledge, which results in subjective decisions. In this work, we propose a novel approach for AHP design and optimization by utilizing Random Forest based AHP (RF-AHP) assessment on categories. We utilize the results of previously developed genomic model on Prostate Cancer. Proposed RF-AHP approach was compared with Delphi-AHP based method on Schizophrenia, Prostate Cancer, Type 2 Diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease genomic datasets and same performance was achieved. Additionally, RegulomeDB database was integrated to RF-AHP. While similar performance was obtained in most of the datasets better prioritization scoring is achieved for Schizophrenia disease.

We would like to see you all in our GATEWAY 2018 event where our Multimedia Informatics Masters students will showcase their Game Development Pipeline course’s games and Machine Learning for Multimedia Informatics course’s projects they developed during this semester.

There will also be a League of Junior Games section where our young game developers will present their card and board games.
 
The event will be held at METU Informatics Institute on 17 January 2018 16:30-20:00. You are all kindly invited.

Do not forget to follow our Facebook page for more information: http://www.facebook.com/GATEWay.METU/
 

Graduate School of Informatics /Cognitive Science

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of ScienceSavaş Çetin will defend his thesis.

Title: AUTOMATIC SENSE PREDICTION OF EXPLICIT DISCOURSE CONNECTIVES IN TURKISH WITH THE HELP OF CENTERING THEORY AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC FEATURES

Date: 02th February 2018

Time: 10:30 AM

Place: A-212

Thesis Abstract : Discourse connectives (and, but, however) are one of many means of keeping the discourse coherent. Discourse connectives are classified into groups based on their senses (expansion, contingency, etc.). They describe the semantic relationship of two discourse units. This study aims to build a machine learning system to predict the sense of explicit discourse connectives on the Turkish Discourse Bank data, which is manually gold-annotated. To do so, this study examines the effect of several features: i.e. transitions of Centering Theory and morphosyntactic characteristics of the arguments in a discourse relation. The results imply that Centering Theory, morphosyntactic features and their combinations affect each class of sense in a different way. When the base score is calculated with only the connective feature, the addition of Centering Theory features seems to have increased the predictions scores for Comparison and Expansion classes. Also, Tense, Aspect and Modality features are observed to slightly affect Temporal class in a positive way.

Due to the applications made for Cyber Security Department Non-Thesis MSc Program in 2017-2018 spring semester ,

Interviews will be held on 15 January 2018 Monday.

Invited applicants have to be ready in front of class II-01 (S-01) in Informatics Instute at the specified date 

Due to the applications made for Cognitive Science Department Informatics PhD and MSc Programs in 2017-2018 spring semester ,

Interviews will be held on 16 January 2018 Tuesday

Invited applicants have to be ready in front of class II-04 (S-04) in Informatics Instute at the specified date

Cognitive Science Department Research Assistant recruitment process is completed. As a result of the process, it was decided that the person named below was recruited as a research assistant.

Selected/Asil

1.Aydın Alaz

Replacement/Yedek:

2.Samet Albayrak

Graduate School of Informatics /Multimedia Informatics

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Nevzat Göksan Güner will defend his thesis.

Title: PROCEDURAL ROAD NETWORK MODEL GENERATION

Date: 12th January 2018

Time: 10:30 AM

Place: A-212

Thesis Abstract : Modeling high scaled road networks with many intersections and distant streets takes a serious amount of 3D modelers’ time. The amount of work 3D modelers need can be reduced by generating the basic model procedurally; therefore, 3D modelers spend more time to work on the details. In this thesis, we focus on procedurally generating low detailed and lightweight 3D road network models with dynamic lanes and lines. Our system also has the same basic abilities with the traditional road network modeling tools capable of creating junctions and pavements. In order to make a better performing 3D model, we use straight and arc road segments consisted of minimum amount of polygons. The main focus of this thesis will be creating a 3D procedural road network generation system with decreased polygon and texture costs.

Interview information for the applications of Health Informatics Department Medical Informatics PhD and MSc 2017-2018 Spring Semester

Interviews will be held on 10 January 2018 Wednesday

Invited applicants have to be ready in front of Conference Hall-2 in Informatics Instute at the specified date

PhD Program

Interview Date : 10 January 2018 09:30 - 12:30

MSc Program

Interview Date : 10 January 2018 13:30 - 16:30

Interview information for the applications of Health Informatics Department Bioninformatics MSc Program 2017-2018 Spring Semester

Interviews will be held on 9 January 2018 Tuesday

Invited applicants have to be ready in front of Conference Hall-2 in Informatics Instute at the specified date

Interview Date: 9 January 2018 13:30 - 17:00

Dr. Oya Çeliktutan (Imperial College London) is going to give a seminar titled "Human Behaviour Analysis in Interactions with Virtual Agents and Robots" for Multimedia Informatics - Multimedia Standards (MMI 726) course. You are all kindly invited.

Location: Conference Room (124), METU Informatics Institute
Time: January 5, 2018, 13:30-14:30

Title: Human Behaviour Analysis in Interactions with Virtual Agents and Robots

Abstract:

Socially intelligent agents and robots are soon to be a fact of everyday life due to the rapid growth in the fields of affective computing, human-machine interaction and social robotics. Numerous innovative applications in healthcare, education and entertainment motivate the development of ever more sophisticated machines that are capable of interpreting human behaviours and adapting to user’s profile, namely, personality, preferences and needs. To realise this vision, one of the prominent research problems is automatic personality analysis. Personality is key in communication: people observe others and form impressions regarding their personalities, and adapt their own behaviours to maintain others’ engagement during social interactions. Doing so is a natural routine for humans. In this talk, I will show how this mechanism can be automated for human-virtual agent and human-robot interactions, and I will highlight our research findings on personality and its relationship with engagement. I will continue my talk with a brief introduction to our current work towards deploying such technologies in healthcare, and I will conclude by discussing open problems in the area.


Bio:

Oya Celiktutan is a postdoctoral researcher in the Personal Robotics Lab in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London, United Kingdom. Before this, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Lab at University of Cambridge between 2016 and 2017, and in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London between 2013 and 2015. She obtained her PhD degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Bogazici University, Turkey, in collaboration with National Institute of Applied Sciences of Lyon, France, in 2013. Her research focuses on computer vision and machine learning within a context of applied work in the areas of human behaviour understanding, affective computing, human-computer interaction and human-robot interaction. She is particularly interested in building smart algorithms to equip machines with the capability of sensing, recognising and interpreting human behaviours for enabling personalised, engaging and assistive interactions with machines.