BioSemantics

The Leiden Biosemantics group investigates knowledge-based methods to innovate translational data analytics for rare and genetic diseases. It is co-founder of the FAIR data principles, which were an initiative of the group’s professor Barend Mons in 2014.

The group combines interdisciplinary research on analytics methods, implementation of FAIR data principles, and disease-specific applications (including Covid-19). It contributes to adoption of FAIR technology and practices at the LUMC, nationally, and internationally.

The increasing volume of biomedical data, now far exceeding human comprehension, creates the potential for computational methods to make new discoveries. The Leiden Biosemantics group applies a multidisciplinary, FAIR-based, approach to optimally exploit the expertise of biologists, bioinformaticians, and computer scientists. In our vision, biomedical researchers will increasingly use advanced computational methods powered by FAIR data as part of their normal routine.

…

The group combines interdisciplinary research on analytics methods, implementation of FAIR data principles, and disease-specific applications (including Covid-19). It contributes to adoption of FAIR technology and practices at the LUMC, nationally, and internationally.

The increasing volume of biomedical data, now far exceeding human comprehension, creates the potential for computational methods to make new discoveries. The Leiden Biosemantics group applies a multidisciplinary, FAIR-based, approach to optimally exploit the expertise of biologists, bioinformaticians, and computer scientists. In our vision, biomedical researchers will increasingly use advanced computational methods powered by FAIR data as part of their normal routine.

We contribute to achieving this vision by developing knowledge-based methods to interpret heterogenous, distributed data, ranging from molecular laboratory data to clinical observations, and from public reference data to locally generated real-world observations. For instance, we develop methods that mine knowledge graphs to prioritize subnetworks of genes, biomarkers, drug targets, and drug candidates. We investigate the implementation of FAIR data principles to achieve a better substrate for efficient data and knowledge analysis across the boundaries of institutes and countries. The Biosemantics group is one of the thought leading groups in this field. Within the LUMC it is one of the founders of the Data stewardship Competency Centre, contributing as a bridge between international research and local application of FAIR data stewardship.

Key publications

Our Team

Prof.dr. Barend Mons   
Principal investigator / Professor Biosemantics

Dr. Marco Roos               
Principal investigator / Associate Professor

Dr. Luiz O. Bonino da Silva Santos 
Associate Professor

Kees A. Burger                
Project leader

…

Prof.dr. Barend Mons   
Principal investigator / Professor Biosemantics

Dr. Marco Roos               
Principal investigator / Associate Professor

Dr. Luiz O. Bonino da Silva Santos 
Associate Professor

Kees A. Burger                
Project leader

Eleni Mina                       
Senior researcher

Annika Jacobsen             
Researcher

Núria Quéralt Rosinach
Researcher

Deniz Yurtsever              
Researcher

Karolis Cremers
Junior data scientist

César H. Bernabé                          
PhD student

Daphne Wijnbergen
PhD student

Rajaram Kaliyaperumal 
Scientific programmer