Advancing precision medicine
Virtuome is the Virtual Metabolic Human’s fully virtual flagship undergraduate summer research programme in Digital Health. Established in 2020, Virtuome is based upon the 3 pillars of biomedical research, personal development, and community involvement, with the aim to catalyse positive societal impact through engaged research. With the guidance of established leaders in their fields, participants crafted a portfolio of tangible outcomes, including presentations, videos, and written documents, alongside ample practice in interpersonal and leadership development, to get ahead in their immediate next career steps. These outputs are at the basis of co-authorship on peer-reviewed publications and scientific conference presentations, to further amplify participants' career profiles, with many alumni directly leveraging Virtuome for securing competitive international graduate positions.
Publications & conference presentations featuring Virtuome:
Publication: Heinken et al., "APOLLO: A genome-scale metabolic reconstruction resource of 247,092 diverse human microbes spanning multiple continents, age groups, and body sites", (submitted). Avicenna Days 2023 (12 Oct 2023) We were the Master of Ceremony for Day 3 themed "Involving and Serving the Patient" of the Avicenna Days 2023, a 3-Day free and online in silico healthcare event, welcoming a total of 450 registered attendees from 35 countries, including people from academia, industry, regulators, policymakers, and patient associations. We highlighted Virtuome in the opening presentation. IHMC 2022 plenary presentation (10 Nov 2022) We presented the Virtual Metabolic Human for human-microbiome metabolic modelling and engaged research at the International Human Microbiome Conference in Kobe, Japan, uniting 800 attendees from all over the world and were honoured with the Global Gut Health Award for our presentation. COBRA 2022 poster presentation on the MicroMap Virtuome outcome (29 Sep 2022) We presented "MicroMap: Interactive visualisation of human microbiome metabolism realised via online systematic team empowerment of STEM undergraduates in Ireland" at the 8th Conference on Constraint-Based Reconstruction & Analysis (COBRA) conference in Galway, Ireland. VPH 2022 poster presentation on the MicroMap Virtuome outcome (8 Sep 2022) We presented "MicroMap: Interactive visualisation of human microbiome metabolism realised via online systematic team empowerment of STEM undergraduates in Ireland" at the Virtual Physiological Human conference in Porto, Portugal. Avicenna Days conference (16 Feb 2022) We were represented on the panel of the "Raising awareness: involving non-engineering communities" panel discussion session of the 2022 Avicenna Days conference for academic and industry professionals working in the field of in silicon medicine. MPA 2021 poster presentation on the MicroMap Virtuome outcome (2 Aug 2021) We presented "MicroMap: Interactive visualisation of human microbiome metabolism realised via online systematic team empowerment of STEM undergraduates in Ireland" at the Metabolic Pathway Analysis (MPA) 2021 conference online (hybrid conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA). IHMC 2021 poster presentation on the MicroMap Virtuome outcome (27-29 Jun 2021) We presented "MicroMap: Interactive visualisation of human microbiome metabolism realised via online systematic team empowerment of STEM undergraduates in Ireland" at the International Human Microbiome Conference online. COBRA 2021 poster presentation on the MicroMap Virtuome outcome (1 Mar 2021)We presented "MicroMaps: Microbiome Metabolic Network Visualization using Systematic Team Empowerment" at the 7th Conference on Constraint-Based Reconstruction and Analysis nominally in Israel, but conducted online.
With the generous contributions from:
