I am a research scientist (ISFP - Inria Starting Faculty Position) at Centre INRIA d’Université Côte d’Azur. I am a member of the EPIONE team (e-patient for e-medicine). I am interested in developing mathematical and statistical models for computational biomedicine. Current research interests include Bayesian learning, generative modeling, causal learning and in-silico trials.

Ongoing projects

I am currently involved in the following projects:

• TALENT: Multimodal risk prediction model
• SimCardioTest: In-silico trials and data science
• Fed-BioMed: contributing to the development of an open-source federated learning framework

Students

• Wassila Khatir, Ph.D. (since Feb. 2024): Integromics analysis: a new angle on the pathophysiology of X-Fragile Syndrome (Inria-IPMC collaboration)
• Safaa Al Ali, Post Doc (since Oct. 2022): Causal data analysis of in-silico trials, within the SimCardioTest project

Open positions

• M2 internship positions : open soon
• PhD position : open soon

Overview on my academic career

I received my Ph.D. from Université Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité in 2016, under the supervision of Vuk Milisic, Gilles Wainrib and Hatem Zaag. The title of my dissertation was Mathematical foundations of antibody affinity maturation. I have developed and studied a mathematical framework based on graphs, to model antibody affinity maturation of B-cells. I have investigated interactions between mutation, division and selection mecanisms, using probabilistic tools and numerical simulations. My Ph.D. project was embedded in the frame of Labex Inflamex.

In January 2017 I have joined the SISTM team (INSERM U1219 Bordeaux Population Health and INRIA) as a postdoc. As part of the EBOVAC1 and EBOVAC2 European consortia, I focused on the mechanistic modeling of the immune response to a prime-boost vaccination strategy against Ebola virus, developed by Janssen (a Johnson&Johnson company).

In February 2020 I have finally joined the EPIONE team at Centre INRIA d’Université Côte d’Azur as a postdoc, where I got interested in the development of Bayesian learning methods in a federated setting, with a particular attention to health applications.

Previous projects

I have actively participated to the following project:

• Ebovac: involved in the workpackages dedicated to within-host mechanistic modeling

Former students

• Bhargav Ramudu Manam, M2 internship (Apr. 2023 - Sept. 2023): Identification and quantification of explanatory variables effects on latent NODE-based trajectories
• Andrea Senacheribbe, M2 internship (Sept. 2020 - Feb. 2021): Extension of multi-views PCA to time series data