Understanding the immune system, immunity, and related diseases through data
10.09.2022 - Strategic Partnership with z-Stat4Life
We are very pleased to announce the new and strategic partnership between the Immune-Stats group and the company z-Stat4Life®. This brand aims at developing products and services in Statistics and Data Science for MSc and PhD students from Portuguese-speaking countries. Examples of these products and services are e-Books, webinars, and workshops on statistical techniques intertwined with the learning of personal development skills (e.g., yoga, neuro-linguistic programming, and coaching) in order to make the learning process lighter, joyful, and, above all, more effective.
29.09.2022 - Congratulations to the new Master in Biostatistics, Frederico Moreira!
We congratulate our student Frederico Moreira who has successfully defended his thesis entitled "Longitudinal analysis of viral shedding in astronauts before, during, and after a mission to the International Space Station" for the degree of Master in Biostatistics of the Department of Statistics and Operational Research, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal. For those interested in Space Statistics, his thesis can be found in our GitHub repository.
23.09.2022 - Teaching at the NGSchool 2022 in Jablonna Palace, Poland!
João Malato and Nuno Sepúlveda had the great pleasure to be speakers at the NGSchool 2022 on Machine Learning in Computational Biology. The summer school took place in the beautiful Jablonna Palace on the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland. The teaching materials on linear regression can be found on GitHub.
23.08.2022 - New publications from João Malato and Nuno Sepúlveda. Congratulations!
Malato J, Ribeiro RM, Leite PP, Casaca P, Fernandes E, Antunes C, Fonseca VR, Gomes MC, Graca L. (2022). Risk of BA.5 infection in individuals exposed to prior SARS-CoV-2 variants. medRxiv.
Malato J, Ribeiro RM, Fernandes E, Leite PP, Casaca P, Antunes C, Fonseca VR, Gomes MC, Graca L. (2022). Rapid waning of protection induced by prior BA.1/BA.2 infection against BA.5 infection. medRxiv.
Sotzny F, Filgueiras IS, Kedor C, Freitag H, Wittke K, Bauer SM, Sepúlveda N, Fonseca DLM, Baiocchi GC, Marques AHC, Kim M, Lange T, Plaça DR, Luebber F, Paulus FM, De Vito R, Jurisica I, Schulze-Forster K, Paul F, Bellmann-Strobl JT, Rust R, Hoppmann U, Shoenfeld YJ, Riemekasten G, Heidecke H, Cabral-Marques O, Scheibenbogen C. Dysregulated autoantibodies targeting vaso- and immunoregulatory receptors in Post COVID Syndrome correlate with symptom severity. Frontiers in Immunology (in press).
13.07.2022 - Solve ME webinar
On 13/07/2022, 19:00 CET, Nuno Sepúlveda will give a webinar entitled "Is There a Herpesviruses-Related Antibody Signature In Patients With ME/CFS?" for Solve ME/CFS Initiative (Solve M.E.). More details can be found in the following this link.
11.07.2022 - New publications
Sepúlveda N, Malato J, Sotzny F, Grabowska AD, Fonseca A, Cordeiro C, Graça L, Biecek P, Behrends U, Mautner J, Westermeier F, Lacerda EM and Scheibenbogen C (2022). Revisiting IgG Antibody Reactivity to Epstein-Barr Virus in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Its Potential Application to Disease Diagnosis. Front. Med. 9:921101.
Ward D, Gomes AR, Tetteh KKA, Sepúlveda N, Gomez LF, Campino S, Clark T (2022). Sero-epidemiological study of arbovirus infection following the 2015–2016 Zika virus outbreak in Cabo Verde. Sci Rep 12:11719
16.05.2022 - Guest seminar (Mustafa Cavus)
On 20/05/2022, 10:00 CET, Mustafa Cavus from the Warsaw University of Technology (Poland) and Eskisehir Technical University (Turkey) will share his thoughts on measuring the ' performance of statistical hypothesis tests. The title and abstract can be found here. If you would like to join the seminar, please follow this link.
12.05.2022 - ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia Awareness day
Today is the ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia Awareness day. Many millions are affected by these debilitating, poorly understood, and often stigmatized diseases. The Immune-Stats group joins this initiative, and wishes for more funding opportunities to give hope to all of these patients neglected by national health authorities.
04.04.2022 - Guest Seminar
On 15/04/2022, 10:00 CET, Riad Hajdarevic from the University of Oslo (Norway) will share with us his research on the immunogenetics of ME/CFS. If you would like to attend it, follow this link to Microsoft Teams. The title and abstract can be found here.
04.04.2022 - Papers accepted or published
Domingues TD, Mouriño H, Sepúlveda N. Analysis of Antibody Data Using Skew-Normal and Skew-T Mixture models. To appear in RevStat - a Statistical Journal.
Sepúlveda N. Ser ou não ser um líder (estatístico)? Boletim SPE (Primavera), 2022; 39-48.
09.03.2022 - Guest seminar
Next Wednesday (16/03/2022, 12:00 CET) Andrea Meilán Vila from the Carlos III University of Madrid will be our guest speaker. She will give us an overview of the recent advances on nonparametric circular regression. If you would like to attend it, follow this link to Google Meet. More info can be found here.
04.03.2022 - New papers already published
Westermeier F, Lacerda EM, Scheibenbogen C, Sepúlveda N. Editorial: Current Insights into Complex Post-Infection Fatigue Syndromes with Unknown Aetiology: the Case of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Beyond. Front Med 2022;9:862953.
Bertinat R, Villalobos-Labra R, Hofmann L, Blauensteiner J, Sepúlveda N, Westermeier F. Decreased NO production in endothelial cells exposed to plasma from ME/CFS patients. Vascul Pharmacol. 2022;143:106953.
14.02.2022 - Seminar announcement
This Wednesday (16/02/2022, 11:00 CET) Constantino Caetano will present his current research on COVID-19 epidemiology in Portugal at the 1st 2022 seminar of the Immune-Stats group. If you would like to attend it, follow this link to Google Meet. More info can be found here.
03.02.2022 - Publications news
Westermeier F, Lacerda EM, Scheibenbogen C, Sepúlveda N. Editorial: Current Insights into Complex Post-Infection Fatigue Syndromes with Unknown Aetiology: the Case of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Beyond. To appear in Frontiers in Medicine.
Sepúlveda N. How to increase the visibility of statisticians in the modern world of Dataism?. To appear in the 2021 Proceedings of the Portuguese Statistical Society.
23.12.2021 - Publications news
Domingues TD, Mourino H, Sepúlveda N. Analysis of cutoff point estimation for determining seropositivity in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infections. medRxiv 2021.12.20.21268100 (2021).
Stanculescu D, Sepúlveda N, Lim CL, Bergquist J. Lessons From Heat Stroke for Understanding Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Frontiers in Neurology 12:2258 (2021).
22.12.2021 - Immune-Stats Xmas challenge
This year there was a terrifying Xmas challenge for all of us: to create a short video about our achievements in 2021. The videos were presented in the last group meeting of the year. The votes for the best video were unanimous: João Malato! He created a funny and well-designed video about his ups and downs during the year. A must-see for all the PhD students who must deal with these yo-yo moments in motivation and productivity.
22.11.2021 - Visit and seminar at CHICAS, United Kingdom
Nuno Sepúlveda had the pleasure to visit the Centre of Health Informatics, Computing and Statistics (CHICAS) at Lancaster University, United Kingdom. He also delivered a talk about the three-sigma rule in serological data analysis of COVID-19 data. Twenty minutes of discussion with the audience! Thanks for the invitation, Emanuele Giorgi!
26.10.2021 - PhD title awarded to Tiago Domingues
The PhD journey has finished for Tiago Dias Domingues. He valiantly defended his thesis entitled "Finite mixture models based on Scale Mixtures of Skew-Normal distributions applied to Serological Data" from the Faculty of Sciences of University of Lisbon, Portugal. Congratulations, Tiago! A new stage of your academic life has just begun!
22.10.2021 - PhD examination
Nuno Sepúlveda was the external examiner of the PhD thesis entitled "Threshold-free statistical methods for the analysis of continuous health outcomes, with application to malaria serology" of the student Irene Kyomuhangi from Lancaster University, United Kingdom. She passed with minor corrections! Congratulation to Irene for a nice discussion and achievement!
27.09.2021 - Publications news
Fonseca A, Ramalhete SV, Mestre A, Pires das Neves R, Marreiros A, Castelo-Branco P, Roberto VP. Identification of colorectal cancer associated biomarkers: an integrated analysis of miRNA expression. Aging 13 (2021).
Dewasurendra R, Sepúlveda N, Chandrasekharan N, Karunaweera N, Gunawardena, S. Polymorphisms in rs915941 and rs915942: Are they associated with increased risk of G6PD enzyme deficiency in the Sri Lankan population?. Journal of the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka, 49:157–168 (2021).
See other publications of the group.
18.08.2021 - ACE2 paper featured on Health Rising
Health rising has featured our latest Heliyon paper on SARS-CoV-2 receptor ACE2 in people with ME/CFS. Health Rising is a blog founded by Cort Johnson with the aim of understanding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. The blog is almost supported by donations and so please donate there!
04.08.2021 - Publications news
Malato J, Sotzny F, Bauer S, Freitag H, Fonseca A, Grabowska AD, Graça L, Cordeiro C, Nacul L, Lacerda EM, Castro-Marrero J, Scheibenbogen C, Westermeier F, Sepúlveda N. The SARS-CoV-2 receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: A meta-analysis of public DNA methylation and gene expression data. Heliyon 7:e07665 (2021).
Sepúlveda N. Impact of genetic variation on the molecular mimicry between Anoctamin-2 and Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen 1 in Multiple Sclerosis. Immunol Lett 238:29-31 (2021).
See other publications of the group.
30.07.2021 - An allelic exclusion story!
Our guest speaker Jorge Carneiro will tell us his latest story about allelic exclusion in antigen receptors. Welcome to the Immune-Stats group, Jorge! I hope you feel proud of being part of the family!
More information on this link.
01.07.2021 - @MiNI, WAW, Poland
The team leader Nuno Sepúlveda began a two-year post at the Department of Mathematics and Information Science (MiNI) at Warsaw University of Technology, Poland. He will run the project entitled "Integrative analysis to discover candidate molecular mimicries between human and viral proteins with application to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and post-outbreak sequelae".
Click here for more information.
25.06.2021 - Where are your modes, Jose?
We had the pleasure of listening to Jose Ameijeiras-Alonso in our weekly group meeting. Thanks for sharing your knowledge about detecting multimodality in data, Jose!
Know more on this link.
Presentation at IMM meeting
Check João Malato talking about his PhD research about the impact of misclassification (or subgrouping) on association studies of ME/CFS.
Congratulations for a job well done, João!