Artificial Intelligence Mediated Discovery and Bio-validation of novel regulators of nervous system stability.

The objective of this industrial case studentship is to provide multidisciplinary training in machine learned data-integration leading to the identification and bio-validation of factors capable of regulating homeostatic maintenance of the nervous system.

There are publicly accessible and privately held research information resources whose artificial intelligence mediated mining promises to plug knowledge gaps surrounding the regulation of nervous system stability and in turn (outwith the scope of this studentship), development of novel stratified and precision regenerative medicines.

This industrial case studentship combining training from Massive Analytic and access to state of the art platforms, with an interdisciplinary supervisory academic team will develop machine learned data-integration leading to the identification (and subsequent bio-validation) of regulators of nervous system development, homeostatic maintenance and postnatal ageing. Such factors would be future foci of broadly applicable therapeutic interventions to improve age related health span and response to degeneration inducing stimuli.

This will be achieved through a unique academic/industrial collaboration to integrate commercially leading artificial intelligence platforms for multimodal data analysis provided by an industrial partner, Massive Analytic (https://www.massiveanalytic.com) with multidisciplinary academic human and animal model expertise in neuronal loss and dysfunction, pluripotent stem cell technology, and medical centric informatics and machine learning.

Loss and dysfunction of brain region selective neuronal synapses is a characteristic feature of "normal healthy" ageing as well as all congenital and adult onset neurological disorders. Elucidating how synaptic alterations associated with advancing-age and/or genetic perturbations leave a neuron vulnerable is essential for our understanding of what regulates nervous system stability in health and disease, but also to the development and design of neuroprotective strategies.