Computer Science applied to Cancer Research

A few notes about what Computer Scientists without any biology base can do in Cancer Research.

Articles

• 04/02/2016, Do Computer Scientists Hold the Key to Treating Cancer?, By David Patterson Professor of Computer Science University of California, Berkeley:

To prepare for that revolutionary leap, we need to draft software experts immediately who can leverage advances in cloud computing and machine learning while protecting patient privacy to start building open-source tools that will enable scientists to make major inroads on cancer.

• 05/12/2011, Computer Scientists May Have What It Takes to Help Cure Cancer, by David Patterson 

Research Topics

Because of the huge genomic data to be available in the near future, next topics will be needed to process it:

• Big Data - obvious: a single human genoma has 3 billion base pairs
• Machine Learning - creating algorithms able to find patterns in the genomic data analyzed.

Sites

• http://cancer-scientist.org/ 
• http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/support-us/citizen-science

Courses

A few online courses related to these topics:

• Future Learn, University of Glasgow - Cancer and the Genomic revolution
• https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/cancer-and-the-genomic-revolution
• EdX, Harvard University - Genomics Data Analysis:
• https://www.edx.org/xseries/genomics-data-analysis
• Coursera, Hopkins, Genomic Data Science Specialization, 8 courses:
• https://www.coursera.org/specializations/genomic-data-science

Machine Learning.

• EdX, Distributed Machine Learning with Apache Spark: https://www.edx.org/course/machine-learning-columbiax-csmm-102x
• Coursera, Machine Learning: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning
  
  

Challenges, Contests & Marathons

• TopCoder:
  
  • PCF Computational Oncology > Computational Oncology