FIU researchers think of a way to speed up a vaccine for COVID-19. Now there’s a $1M grant.
Machine-learning algorithms that work with supercomputers to analyze and understand data in speedy time could hold the key to finding cures for many diseases — including the novel coronavirus.
That’s what Florida International University researcher Fahad Saeed and his colleagues have been developing.
On Wednesday, their work was recognized by the National Institutes of Health with a three-year, $1 million grant to help FIU researchers design and develop machine-learning algorithms that allow biologists to make sense of proteomics — the large-scale study of proteins.
According to the researchers, the study of proteins is critical for understanding and treating diseases, but there is so much data to analyze and so little time.
“In the past, biologists have spent long periods of time — sometimes their entire lives — studying as few as one single protein,” the university said in a news release. “In recent years, mass spectrometers, machines that use electricity and magnetism to analyze atoms, have allowed biologists to generate massive amounts of data from a few samples. The challenge is the data is difficult to understand with the naked eye.”
Saeed, principal investigator and associate professor in FIU’s School of Computing and Information Sciences in the College of Engineering & Computing, along with other FIU researchers, plan to use the grant money to develop machine-learning algorithms that work with supercomputers. These machines are used for complex mathematical calculations at speeds that far exceed those of standard computers. This, they believe, could help fellow researchers analyze and understand the data.
COVID-19 would be one disease Saeed believes his team’s machine-learning algorithms can be applied to study. Their proposal to use novel artificial intelligence models could help biologists make sense of huge data sets more precisely and rapidly, allowing for the study of millions of proteins at once.
“The reason we don’t have a vaccine yet is that we don’t know enough about the virus,” Saeed said in the release. “With the ability to study more data, quicker and more efficiently, biologists can learn more about these types of viruses and work towards a vaccine.”
Using some of the grant money, Saeed hopes to hire FIU graduate and postdoctoral students to aid in the research. The code he is developing would be available on his lab’s website, SaeedLab — High-Performance Data Computing for Advancing Science & Society.
This story was originally published June 10, 2020 at 2:42 PM.
