Kim-Anh wins funding for global Human Cell Atlas project

Melbourne technology boosts effort to map every cell in human body

Two new software projects designed in Melbourne could accelerate the progress of the world-first Human Cell Atlas – an ambitious effort to map every cell in the human body as a resource for understanding, preventing and treating disease.

MIG group leader Dr Kim-Anh Lê Cao and collaborator Dr Matt Ritchie (WEHI) were the only Australian-based researchers to receive funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which recently announced US$15 million for 85 projects to support the Human Cell Atlas effort globally.

Kim-Anh’s MixOmics project will offer sophisticated new computational methods that combine layers of molecular information to give researchers a complete picture of what distinguishes cells in the body.

Transforming data into knowledge requires powerful analytical methods. Our projects aim to develop statistical and computational methods to link and extract valuable information from different datasets. The methods can then be used by researchers to make new discoveries from these data

- Kim-Anh Lê Cao