Speaker
James ODwyer
(University of Illinois)
Description
In this talk we'll explore three different approaches to understanding and prediction in microbiomes. First, we'll explore commonalities between microbial community dynamics and several other complex systems, identifying where general lessons and constraints can inform our interpretation of community patterns. Second, we'll survey a range of mechanistic models, where these have given insights, and also where they fall short in terms of both understanding and prediction. Finally, we'll cover new work on using compressive sensing and machine learning to predict microbiome function from limited data, and whether a deeper understanding of these dynamics can be resurrected from those predictions.
