Melbourne Integrative Genomics
Melbourne Integrative Genomics (MIG) is an interdisciplinary initiative of the University of Melbourne
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MIG News & Research Highlights
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New strategic partnership between the University and genomics giant Illumina
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March - June
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Professor Michael Stumpf joins MIG
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Dr Davis McCarthy has joined MIG
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Congrats to David
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The Rise and Fall of BritainsDNA: A Tale of Misleading Claims, Media Manipulation and Threats to Academic Freedom
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How many individuals share a mitochondrial genome?
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UK Biobank paper published in Nature
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Women leaders in STEMM
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4 years funding secured
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Mongrel mutts and show clones
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Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Program 2019 success
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Bethlehem Griffiths Research Foundation Grant
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Successful 3-day workshop
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MS Research Australia Grant
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Indigenous Australian reference genome
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July - November
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Sex-Specific Analysis of Cardiovascular Function
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What are the long-term health risks of having your tonsils out?
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Damjan secures funding
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Advances in genetics and their impact on life insurance
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Better estimation of SNP heritability from summary statistics provides a new understanding of the genetic architecture of complex traits
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Melbourne technology boosts effort to map every cell in human body
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Support for Female ECR
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Collaborative paper between Kim-Anh & John Moreau (AM)
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The People of the British Isles study
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Visiting PhD Student heads home to Brazil
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MIG Semester 1 Seminar Series, 2018
Semester 1 Schedule, 2018
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Bioinformatics Peer Prize III
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French connection with MIG
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Congrats to Kim-Anh & Damjan
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MIG Launch Event - 23rd November, 2017
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From genotypes to phenotypes: Quantifying the functional load
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Positioning Australian stem cell research for the future
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How Convincing is a Y-Chromosome Profile Match?
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Human hair GWAS - Altmetric Top 100 2016
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Predicting disease-potential: epilepsy genes
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Genome-Wide Genetic Data on ~500,000 UK Biobank Participants
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MIG Seminar Series
Semester 2 Schedule, 2017
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Genetic Connection Between Heart Disease & Human Reproduction Revealed
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SNP Heritability in Complex Traits
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Multi-Omic Data Integration
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Genetics Research & Life Insurance
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Allan Motyer Wins the ECR Award, GeneMappers 2017
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SysGen Seminar Series
Semester 1 Schedule, 2017
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2016 Schedule
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About MIG
We aim to understand biological systems, with a focus on genomes as the blueprint for each system. We are interested in biological systems of different scales, including molecular systems, cell systems, individuals, host-pathogen interactions, species interactions, and populations. For more details see our Research page.
MIG is co-hosted by the School of BioSciences and School of Mathematics & Statistics. We are supported by the Faculty of Science and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and work closely with Melbourne Bioinformatics and the Computational Biology Research Initiative.
Research Groups
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David Balding
Computational statistics applied to population, evolutionary, medical and forensic genetics
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Yao-ban Chan
Application of mathematical and statistical methods to phylogenetics and evolutionary biology
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Irene Gallego Romero
Functional, regulatory and comparative genomics; pluripotent stem cells as systems for genomic studies in non-model mammals
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Kim-Anh Lê Cao
Multivariate statistics, ‘omics data integration, feature selection, microbiome, computational statistical learning, R software
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Stephen Leslie
Statistical genetics with a particular interest in developing methods for, and applying them to, studies of population structure and immunogenetics
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Davis McCarthy
Computational statistics, statistical genetics and bioinformatics, multi-omic data analysis
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Heejung Shim
Statistical and computational approaches for the analysis of complex and large-scale genomic data with applications to functional genomics and molecular/trait evolution
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Michael Stumpf
Statistical, mathematical, evolutionary and functional analysis of molecular interaction networks and dynamical processes in biological systems
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Damjan Vukcevic
Statistical genetics, association analysis, imputation, computational statistics, Bayesian data analysis
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Research Manager - Andrew Siebel
Andrew completed his undergraduate BSc(Hons) degree in Zoology and Physiology at The University of Melbourne (1996-1999). His PhD was in the field of Reproductive
Endocrinology enrolled through the Department of Zoology, the University of Melbourne and Howard Florey Institute. Andrew then received a prestigious NHMRC Early Career Research Fellowship (2005-2009) to work on developmental programming of adult disease in the Department of Physiology. He moved to the Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Research Institute in 2009 to work firstly in the Human Epigenetics laboratory, then the Metabolic and Vascular Physiology laboratory (2010-2015). His research interests include cardiovascular physiology, glucose metabolism, lipid biology and interventional clinical trials.
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Genomic Data Specialist - Bobbie Shaban
Originally from Perth, Bobbie obtained a double degree in Molecular Biology and Computer Science at Murdoch University. He has worked in a number of Bioinformatics roles including as a bioinformatics
officer at the Centre for Comparative Genomics at Murdoch University, the Health Protection Agency UK (Now Public Health England) where he worked on The FF100 Swine flu database and also the Enteric Molecular Typing Network for the 5 nations and at the Australian Genome Research Facility here in Melbourne. In previous roles he was the administrator of the Cluster scheduling software (Sun Grid Engine) and was a Bioinformatician specialising in Genomic Assembly, RNA virus discovery, High performance computing and software pipeline optimisation. He also has experience in Web development, Database admin and creation, a number of computing languages including PERL, PHP and the MVC Frameworks Laravel and Ruby on Rails.
Follow Bobbie's MIG I.T. blog here.
STAFF & STUDENTS
Postdocs | Students |
Ashley Farlow (Leslie) | |
John Holmes (Balding) | Katalina Bobowik (PhD - Gallego Romero) |
Malathi Imiyage Dona (Lê Cao) | Alana Butler (MSc - Lê Cao) |
Abolfazl (Al) JalalAbadi (Lê Cao) | Laura Cook (PhD - Gallego Romero) |
Zitong Li (Lê Cao) | Anna Farre Orteu (PhD - Gallego Romero) |
Allan Motyer (Leslie) | Qian Feng (PhD - Chan) |
Houying Zhu (Leslie) | Sanshan Ji (MSc - Vukcevic) |
William Ho (Leslie) | River Kano (MSc - Gallego Romero) |
Aleks Dakic (Lê Cao) | Anubhav Kaphle (PhD - Balding) |
Brendan Law (MSc - Shim) | |
Recent Visitors | Quiyi Li (PhD - Chan) |
Ziewi Liu (MSc - Shim) | |
Hanaisa Sant'Anna de Pla (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil) - August 2018-August 2019 | Chengyu Li (PhD - Balding) |
Sebastien Dejean (Toulouse University) - July-August 2018 | Ali Mahmoudi (PhD - Balding) |
Jukka Corander (University of Oslo and University of Helsinki) - December 2017-January 2018 | Jiangrong Ouyang (MSc - Shim) |
Tatiana Hessab (Perito Criminal do IPPGF, Rio de Janeiro Area, Brazil) - July 2017-January 2018 | Daniel Pederson (MSc - Shim) |
Laetitia Cardonnna (IRSTEA, France) - November-December 2017 | Denny Shin (MSc - Shim) |
Olivier Chapleur (IRSTEA, France) - September-December 2017 | Matthew Silcocks (PhD - Leslie & Ashley Farlow) |
Solange Pruilh (INSA Toulouse, France) - July-September 2017 | Georgia Tsambos (PhD - Leslie & Vukcevic) |
Doug Speed (Aarhus University and University College London) - April-May 2017 | Davide Vespasiani (PhD - Gallego Romero) |
Paul O'Reilly (King's College London) - April 2017 | William Walters (MSc - Gallego Romero) |
John Whittaker (GSK, UK) - April 2017 | Eva Wang (PhD - Lê Cao) |
Manu Yadav (MSc - Chan/Shim) | |
Yupei You (MSc - Balding) |
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Melbourne Integrative Genomics (MIG), The University of Melbourne, welcomes applications to become an Associate Member (AM). AMs can be researchers at the University of Melbourne or other Parkville research institutes, or any others who have research interests relevant to integrative genomics and can benefit from and contribute to MIG as indicated below.
Meet our Associate Members
Benefits of AM status can include:
- Help with UoM Honorary or Visiting Researcher status where appropriate
- Card access to MIG space
- Hot desk space for group leaders (shared office)
- Hot desk space for students & postdocs (open offices)
- Use of meeting room or other bookable rooms
- Infrastructure access (computing allocation)
- Opportunity to contribute to the planning of, and to participate in, MIG activities (such as workshops and seminars)
In return, AMs are expected to:
- Contribute to MIG activities
- Develop collaborations with Core research group members
- If MIG’s resources are used, appropriate affiliation should be included in publications
- Provide photo and brief bio for website
- Contribute to MIG annual reporting as requested
Interested in becoming an Associate Member? Contact the Research Manager for more information.
High Performance Compute cluster [helix]
Managed by Bobbie Shaban (Genomic Data Specialist)
384 cores, 3.1Tb RAM, 200Tb storage
Administered by Melbourne Bioinformatics, formerly the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI).
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Thursday 12:00pm - 1:00pmMIG Special Seminar - Nicholas Banovich - Using functional genomics to uncover novel biology in comp...Seminar/Forum
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Friday 12:00pm - 1:00pmMIG Seminar Series - Heather Lee - Single Cell Epigenomics for Analysis of Rare and Heterogeneous Ce...Seminar/Forum
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MIG MixOmics microbiome workshop – 15-17 April, 2019Event
Past events
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Tuesday 9:30am - 4:30pmMIG SNP-based heritability workshop – 11 December, 2018Event
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Monday 12pm - 1pmStatistical Genetics journal club - November 2018Event
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Tuesday 9am - 5pmR skills workshops – 13 November, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Heejung Shim – 9th November, 2018Event
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Monday 12pm - 1pmStatistical Genetics journal club - November 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Michael Stumpf – 26th October, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Matthew Hahn – 12th October, 2018Event
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Monday 12pm - 1pmStatistical Genetics journal club - October 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Jenny Graves – 21st September, 2018Event
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Monday 12pm - 1pmStatistical Genetics journal club - September 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Vanessa Hayes – 7th September, 2018Event
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Monday 12pm - 1pmSpecial MIG Seminar – Bogdan Pasaniuc – 3rd September, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Alexei Drummond – 24th August, 2018Event
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Tuesday 12pm - 1pmMaths & Stats Colloquium – Augustine Kong – Tuesday 21st August, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Eric Stone – 10th August, 2018Event
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MIG MixOmics workshop – 23-35 July, 2018Event
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Wednesday 1pm - 2pmStatistical Genetics journal clubEvent
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Tuesday 2pm - 4pmMIG Reproducible Research workshop – 17 July, 2018Event
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Wednesday 2pm - 3pmSpecial MIG Seminar – Qixin He – Wednesday 11th July, 2018Event
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Wednesday 1pm - 2pmStatistical Genetics journal clubEvent
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Kathryn Burdon – 1st June, 2018Event
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Monday 12pm - 1pmSpecial MIG Seminar – Ran Blekhman – Monday 21st May, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Ryan Lister – 18th May, 2018Event
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Wednesday 1pm - 2pmStatistical Genetics journal clubEvent
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Gavin Huttley – 4th May, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Emily Remnant – 20th April, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Melissa Davis – 6th April, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Alex Andrianopoulos – 16th March, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Naomi Wray – 2nd March, 2018Event
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Wednesday 10am - 12:30pmSpecial MIG Seminars – Rafael Irizarry & Marylyn Ritchie – 14th February, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Colin Semple – 9th February, 2018Event
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Monday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Jukka Corander – 11th December, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Minni Änkö – 8th December, 2017Event
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Thursday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Doug Speed – 7th December, 2018Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – William Ho – 1st December, 2017Event
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MIG Launch EventEvent
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Irene Gallego Romero – 17th November, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmMIG Seminar – Kay Hodgins – 3rd November, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Laura Weyrich – 27th October, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Allan Motyer – 20th October, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Olivier Chapleur – 13th October, 2017Event
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Friday 12:30pm - 1:15pmSysGen Special Seminar – Researcher@Library session – 22nd September, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Kim-Anh Lê Cao – 15th September, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Kiymet Bozaoglu – 8th September, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Jemma Geoghegan – 1st September, 2017Event
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Tuesday 2pm - 5pmSysGen SymposiumEvent
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Aaron Darling – 25th August, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Kaylene Simpson – 18th August, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Yao-ban Chan – 11th August, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 2pmSysGen Special Seminar – BGI Australia – 4th August, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Neil Young – 28th July, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Nick Martin – 14th July, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Phoebe Chen – 30th June, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – David Ascher – 23rd June, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Marnie Blewitt – 16th June, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Alistair Forrest – 9th June, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Alyssa Barry – 2nd June, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Juliet French – 26th May, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Jac Charlesworth – 19th May, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Charles Robin – 12th May, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Teo Yik Ying (YY) – 1st May, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Paul O'Reilly – 21st April, 2017Event
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Friday 12pm - 1pmSysGen Seminar – Alex Fournier-Level – 31st March, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – David Balding – 10th March, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Ray Tobler – 3rd March, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Adam Palmer – 15th February, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Joshua Quick – 10th February, 2017Event
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SysGen Seminar – Michael Beer – 24th January, 2017Event
Research projects available to undergraduate and postgraduate students
We offer a range of MSc and PhD student projects with computational biology and genomics research themes
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Multivariate computational methods for data integration of single cell assays
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Machine learning methods for mRNA alternative splicing
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2D multi-scale approaches for analysis of high-throughput sequencing data
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Treelets-based approaches to estimating sparse fine-scale population structure from genetic data
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Predicting stem cell behaviour
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Finding signatures of cell identity in Stemformatics
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Genome-wide models for heritability and prediction
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Quantifying genetic variation across multiple populations
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Forensic weight-of-evidence for unilineal markers
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Gaussian process regression for ABC inference
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The population history of indigenous Australians: what can the available genetic data tell us?
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Inference of RNA binding proteins (RBP) occupancy transcriptome-wide
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Statistical approaches for analysis of ribosome profiling data: regulation of stop codon readthrough during protein translation
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Better predictions of transcription factor activity in footprinting
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Developing a comprehensive chimpanzee transcriptome
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Reconciliations of gene and species phylogenies
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Mathematical modelling of recombination between gene duplicates
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A time-course ‘omics multivariate data analysis framework
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Overall model fit criteria for multivariate integrative models
We create and distribute software and IT tools for the computational biology research community
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KIR*IMP
The KIR*IMP method will allow you to impute various KIR types using your data, including KIR gene copy number, KIR A or B haplotype and gene-content haplotypes.
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LDAK
Fast computation of LD-Adjusted SNP weights and Kinship matrices for genome-wide mixed-model analysis. Includes a generalised REML Solver and efficient gene-based association testing.
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likeLTD
likeLTD is an R package for computing likelihoods for DNA profile evidence, including complex mixtures and when profiles are subject to dropout.
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mixOmics
mixOmics is an R toolkit for the multivariate analysis of biological data, with a specific focus on ‘omics data integration and variable selection.
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multiBLUP
The best genomic predictor we can find, for individual genotype data and both binary and quantitative traits. Generalises the classical BLUP approach and largely retains its computational efficiency.
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mvBIMBAM
BIMBAM for genetic association analysis of multiple related phenotypes.
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WaveQTL
Wavelet-based genetic association analysis of functional phenotypes arising from high-throughput sequencing assays.
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MTR-Viewer
The Missense Tolerance Ratio measures the purifying selection acting on missense variants. Interactive plots and downloads available for 18,000+ genes.

Genomic Databases Resource Hub
Melbourne Integrative Genomic’s I.T. blog (COGENT) is a genomic resource hub used to store tutorials, information about genomic databases and contact information that is regularly used by our group and collaborators. COGENT contains video recordings of our fortnightly computational tutorials and in-depth background on major genomic datasets available online, managed by Bobbie Shaban (Genomic Data Specialist, MIG).
Statistical Genetics Online Lecture Series

Location
Melbourne Integrative Genomics (MIG) is located on Royal Parade at the University of Melbourne’s main Parkville campus (Building 184), a 20 minute walk or short tram ride (Route 19, Stop no. 11) from the city centre.
Mailing address
Melbourne Integrative Genomics
Building 184, Royal Parade
University of Melbourne
Parkville 3010, Victoria, Australia
Contacts
David Balding (Director) | Phone: 8344 3730 | Email: david.balding@unimelb.edu.au |
Andrew Siebel (Research Manager) | Phone: 8344 0707 | Email: asiebel@unimelb.edu.au |
Bobbie Shaban (Genomic Data Specialist) | Phone: 8344 8731 | Email: babak.shaban@unimelb.edu.au |