Rachel Thomas, PhD - AI and Immunology

I spent close to 20 years focused on mathematics and data science, including cofounding the research lab fast.ai, which focused on the powerful family of AI algorithms known as deep learning. A few years ago, I decided to make a big pivot and return to school for immunology. What motivated my sudden change amidst a successful career? We are now living in a pandemicene, a period with increasingly likely pandemics. Climate change and habitat destruction are crowding species into closer and closer contact with humans. Frequent global travel and mega-cities allow unprecedented opportunities for viruses to spread and mutate. Antibiotic resistance is rising rapidly.

At the same time, we have been learning more and more about the long-term consequences of infections– seemingly mild infections can contribute to long-term autoimmune diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer. The human immune system is incredibly complex and there is much we don’t know about it. Immunology is a crucial area to study. In this post, I want to gather some of my writing and talks on how AI is being applied to immunology.

T cells are one of the most important cell types of our immune systems. Figuring out how to predict what a T cell will bind to (meaning what cells it can recognize as bad and coordinate attacks against) would be a vital medical breakthrough.

Leave a Comment