Conexiant
Login
  • The Analytical Scientist
  • The Cannabis Scientist
  • The Medicine Maker
  • The Ophthalmologist
  • The Pathologist
  • The Traditional Scientist
The Analytical Scientist
  • Explore

    Explore

    • Latest
    • News & Research
    • Trends & Challenges
    • Keynote Interviews
    • Opinion & Personal Narratives
    • Product Profiles
    • App Notes

    Featured Topics

    • Mass Spectrometry
    • Chromatography
    • Spectroscopy

    Issues

    • Latest Issue
    • Archive
  • Topics

    Techniques & Tools

    • Mass Spectrometry
    • Chromatography
    • Spectroscopy
    • Microscopy
    • Sensors
    • Data and AI

    • View All Topics

    Applications & Fields

    • Clinical
    • Environmental
    • Food, Beverage & Agriculture
    • Pharma and Biopharma
    • Omics
    • Forensics
  • People & Profiles

    People & Profiles

    • Power List
    • Voices in the Community
    • Sitting Down With
    • Authors & Contributors
  • Business & Education

    Business & Education

    • Innovation
    • Business & Entrepreneurship
    • Career Pathways
  • Events
    • Live Events
    • Webinars
  • Multimedia
    • Video
Subscribe
Subscribe

False

The Analytical Scientist / Issues / 2018 / May / The Big Data Explorer
Mass Spectrometry Data and AI

The Big Data Explorer

Assistant professor Benjamin Balluff develops innovative bioinformatics approaches that allow M4I researchers to master their data.

By Benjamin Balluff 05/02/2018 1 min read

Share

What is your goal?
I develop advanced data analysis methods for MSI of cancer tissues – revealing molecular heterogeneity within apparently homogeneous tumors. Intra-tumor heterogeneity plays an important role in therapeutic failures and progression of the disease. I want to use MSI to pinpoint clinically detrimental tumor subpopulations for further in-depth investigation.

What are the challenges?
The analysis of MSI data is challenging in many ways – ranging from the optimal processing of gigabyte-sized data to selecting the correct statistical analysis. The rapid advance of instrument capabilities has increased demands on computational power and memory. What’s more, this data delivers a degree of detail that the human brain is unable to process without the help of algorithms and clever data visualization tools. I develop new methods and algorithms that help to interpret the data and ultimately find answers to urgent biomedical questions. Integration of different (imaging) data modalities is a prerequisite for successful personalized medicine.
What new advances excite you?
With the rising popularity of MSI, more bioinformatics groups from outside of our field have become interested in this type of data, which in turn leads to an acceleration in the development of useful tools for the analysis of MSI data, including commercial solutions. I hope this widespread interest will help us, as a community, to achieve our aim of making MSI a robust diagnostic tool in a clinical setting. Our focus is, of course, mainly on MSI, but there is a wider trend in life science to integrate data on the same subject from different modalities. We have to work together with different specialties and disciplines, and find a way to combine heterogeneous data (of different sizes and optical resolutions, at different scales, in different storage formats, and so on) using tailored software solutions.

Newsletters

Receive the latest analytical science news, personalities, education, and career development – weekly to your inbox.

Newsletter Signup Image

About the Author(s)

Benjamin Balluff

Assistant professor Benjamin Balluff develops innovative bioinformatics approaches that allow M4I researchers to master their data.

More Articles by Benjamin Balluff

False

Advertisement

Recommended

False

Related Content

 This Week’s Mass Spec News
Mass Spectrometry
This Week’s Mass Spec News

April 4, 2025

2 min read

 What If Computers Could Smell?
Mass Spectrometry
What If Computers Could Smell?

April 3, 2025

13 min read

Computers can “see” and “hear,” but fully digitizing scent has so far eluded science – but that may soon change

The Analytical Scientist Innovation Awards 2024: #6
Mass Spectrometry
The Analytical Scientist Innovation Awards 2024: #6

December 3, 2024

3 min read

Syft Technologies’ William Pelet introduces the Syft Explorer – the world's first fully mobile, real-time, and direct trace gas analyzer

The Analytical Scientist Innovation Awards 2024: #4
Mass Spectrometry
The Analytical Scientist Innovation Awards 2024: #4

December 5, 2024

6 min read

Thermo Fisher Scientific’s high-sensitivity mass spec for translational omics research – the Stellar MS – is ranked 4th in our annual Innovation Awards

False

The Analytical Scientist
Subscribe

About

  • About Us
  • Work at Conexiant Europe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Advertise With Us
  • Contact Us

Copyright © 2025 Texere Publishing Limited (trading as Conexiant), with registered number 08113419 whose registered office is at Booths No. 1, Booths Park, Chelford Road, Knutsford, England, WA16 8GS.