NLM DIR Seminar Schedule
UPCOMING SEMINARS
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May 26, 2026 Harutyun Saakyan
Emergence of ribonucleoproteins in molecular evolution simulations -
May 27, 2026 Brian Abraham
Cis-Regulatory Organization and Transcription Factor Control of Cell Identity and Disease -
June 4, 2026 Yin Fang
TBD -
June 9, 2026 Pascal Mutz
TBD -
June 11, 2026 Angela Jiang
TBD
RECENT SEMINARS
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May 19, 2026 Leann Lindsey
Are Genomic Language Models Learning? Insights from Tokenization Analysis and Prophage Detection in Bacterial Genomes -
May 14, 2026 Brandon Colelough
Biomedical LLM Hallucinations: Detection, Taxonomy, and Mechanistic Knowledge Localization -
May 12, 2026 John Bridgers
A bi-partition function algorithm to evaluate inferred subclonal structures in single-cell sequencing data -
May 5, 2026 Benjamin Hou
Machine Learning for Craniofacial Malocclusion Prediction -
April 28, 2026 Niccolo Marini
From Unimodal Datasets to Multimodal Foundation Models: Synthetic Clinical Notes for Dermatology AI
The NLM DIR holds a public weekly seminar series for NLM trainees, staff scientists, and investigators to share details on current and exciting research projects at NLM. Seminars take place on Tuesdays at 11:00 AM, EST and some Thursdays at 3:00 PM, EST. Seminars are held in the B2 Library of Building 38A on the main NIH campus in Bethesda, MD.
To schedule a seminar, click the “Schedule Seminar” button to the right, select an appropriate date on the calendar to sign up, and then complete the form. You will need an NIH PIV card to access the “Schedule Seminar” page.
Please include seminars by invited visiting scientists in the NLM DIR seminar series. These need not be on a Tuesday or Thursday.
If you would like to schedule a seminar by a visiting scientist, click the “Schedule Seminar” and complete the form. Contact NLMDIRSeminarScheduling@mail.nih.gov with questions. Please follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe to/from the NLM DIR seminar mailing list.
Titles and Abstracts for Upcoming Seminars
(based on the current date)
Emergence of ribonucleoproteins in molecular evolution simulations
The emergence and evolution of the first biologically functional macromolecules are central to understanding the origin of life, one of the most challenging problems in the history of science. The lack of molecular fossils from the primordial events makes many hypotheses about the emergence of the first elements of life unfalsifiable and speculative. Simulating molecular evolution from first principles can help us better understand the chemistry-to-biology transition and generate testable hypotheses. The All-atom Molecular Evolution Simulator (AMES) is designed to simulate the evolution of biological polymers and their complexes under various conditions. Using AMES, we demonstrate how the first protein-RNA complexes could have emerged from random sequences and the importance of these interactions in the origin of life.
Cis-Regulatory Organization and Transcription Factor Control of Cell Identity and Disease
Cell identity and disease states are shaped by transcription factor (TF) activity within cis-regulatory landscapes organized in three-dimensional chromatin space. Regulatory element composition and spatial organization are highly dynamic and frequently disrupted in cancer. The Abraham lab develops computational approaches to identify cis-regulatory architectures governing cell identity and their aberrant activation in pediatric malignancies. Using graph-based machine learning, we define higher-order communities of cis-regulatory elements, termed “3D super-enhancers,” that coordinate long-range gene regulation and association with transcriptional condensates. We also examine early enhancer and TF activation events during rhabdomyosarcoma transformation, revealing coordinate activation of muscle and neural lineage programs preceding overt oncogenic states and underscoring fundamental principles of gene dysregulation in cancer.
TBD