DDLS and WASP joint call 2022

In the light of last year’s successful cooperation, WASP and the SciLifeLab and Wallenberg National Program on Data-Driven Life Science (DDLS), are now announcing their second joint project call. The aim of the collaborative projects is to bridge the gap between data science and life science and create unique resources of competence and technical abilities, to solve ground-breaking research questions.

DDLS and WASP have a strong ambition to form solid collaborations by bridging the gap between their scientific disciplines respectively. The Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation has earmarked funding for such collaborations in their donations to both these programs. To amplify their collaboration, DDLS and WASP announce a second call for proposals for joint research projects.

Unique opportunity

In the first call, 15 applications were awarded grants for two-year projects, encompassing several research domains.

Bo Bernhardsson, Professor, Department of Automatic Control, Lund University and Mats Karlsson Professor at the Department of Pharmacy, Uppsala University are leading the WASP-DDLS project “Learning pharmacometric model structures from data”:

“The WASP-DDLS project has been vital for us to initiate a research cooperation between Lund and Uppsala concerning Pharmacometric Modeling”, says Bo Bernhardsson.

The aim of the project is to develop methods to simultaneously learn the structure and parameters of covariate models and to improve pharmacometric predictors suited for individualized precision medical therapies.

Bo Bernhardsson continues:

“In Lund we were very fortunate to find an excellent postdoc, Jesper Sundell. He describes the project in this video”:

The WASP-DDLS effort is a unique opportunity for leading researchers in the two different areas to meet and develop collaborations. Bo Bernhardsson is convinced that such interdisciplinary approaches are necessary to meet future demands:

“Looking into the future, the rapidly growing amount of available life-science data and the potential to transform this data into useful knowledge will accelerate the need for more collaborations between engineering and life science”.

Tuuli Lappalainen, professor in Gene Technology at KTH, received the WASP-DDLS collaboration grant together with Stefan Bauer assistant professor at the division of decision and control systems at KTH, for the project called “A causal map of the cell”.

Lappalainen and her research group is studying how different genetic variants affect the molecular and cellular processes that contribute to disease risk and other human traits. Rather than studying specific diseases, the research focuses on general patterns of how genetic variants affect molecular and cellular functions. In the collaboration project, Tuuli Lappalainen and Stefan Bauer aim to develop novel computational methods to infer causal regulatory networks in human cells from existing and upcoming CRISPR gene knockdown data sets:

“This project is a fantastic opportunity to combine cutting-edge biological data with statistical methods development to tackle a fundamental challenge in biology. With both of us having recently relocated to Sweden from abroad, it’s also an opportunity to build new research networks here”, says Tuuli Lappalainen.

The WASP-DDLS Joint Call 2022 will be open for applications between December 22, 2022, and March 31, 2023.

Joint networking event

The granted projects can be viewed as the foundation of a new research society, where data science and life science can meet to create unique resources of competence and technical abilities, which in turn will lead to synergy effects that will benefit the entire research community.

In connection to the call, there will be a joint information and networking event for the two programs on January 27, 2023.

Registration is open until January 18, 2023.