Studying Science Scientifically Speaker Series: Thomas Stoeger

Thomas Stoeger is an assistant professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Northwestern University, where he established his laboratory in October 2023. He previously joined Northwestern as a data science scholar for his postdoctoral research. He graduated from the University of Zurich in 2016, where he received the annual award for the best PhD thesis in the sciences. His postdoctoral research earned him the K99/R00 Postdoc-to-Tenure-Track Award from the National Institute on Aging.

Abstract: 
Biomedical research has traditionally concentrated on a small subset of genes that were extensively studied in the 1980s and 1990s. This focus has led to surprising gaps in our knowledge: typically, half of the genes that are important to disease, according to unbiased data, have never been mentioned in any research articles. Since this gap persists despite being noted two decades ago, my research seeks to understand why this lack of investigation continues. Building on these insights, I have developed hypotheses on how to effectively study a broader set of genes. To test these hypotheses, I took a significant career risk by personally applying them to a scientific field in which I had no prior experience. This effort led to the discovery of Gene Length-dependent Transcription Decline, a molecular phenomenon that explains changes in gene activity during human aging. Lastly, I will briefly present an unpublished AI-enabled investigation of the historical archives of the Human Genome Project and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

About the speaker series:
The CIRSS Friday Speaker Series continues in Fall with a new theme of "Studying Science Scientifically: State of the Art and Prospects for the Science of Science.”   With increasingly rich data sources, exciting new technologies for understanding natural language, and modeling methodologies adapted from diverse domains of scholarship, the opportunities to observe, measure, and model the structure and dynamics of the scientific enterprise abound as never before. We are inviting some of the leading thinkers and most innovative researchers to present at this talk series to illustrate the breadth of advances that have been made, and the many more yet to be made. 

We meet most Fridays, 11am-noon Central time, on Zoom.  Everyone is welcome to attend.  More information, including upcoming speaker schedule and links to recordings, is available on the series website.  For weekly updates on upcoming talks, subscribe to our CIRSS Seminars mailing list.  Our Fall series is led by Timothy McPhillips and Yuanxi Fu, and supported by the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS) and the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.