Artificial intelligence pioneers fund next generation of researchers Posted on : Jul 20 - 2022

The generous gift supports collaborative, multi-disciplinary research underway in the University of Sydney's Digital Sciences Initiative.

The founders of global tech company Appen, Julia and Chris Vonwiller, will fund a $1 million acceleration of the University's Digital Sciences Initiative (DSI).

The gift will support renowned researcher Professor Gemma Figtree's collaboration with the DSI in her quest to achieve the 'holy grail' of cardiac disease research – the discovery of blood-based biomarkers that indicate the earliest signs of heart disease.

Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, killing an estimated 7.2 million people each year. In Australia, it is also the leading cause of disease burden as well as death, affecting more than 580,000 people in 2017-18.

"We have long known that smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes and hypertension are risk factors for heart disease, but many people develop a silent build-up of plaque in their arteries and suffer subsequent heart attack without any of these risk factors," Professor Figtree said.

As part of the project, Professor Figtree and her team will apply complex algorithms to clinical and state-of-the-art 'omic' data to unravel novel biomarkers of heart disease in its early phases.

"As part of our study, we will analyse blood samples of individuals who have advanced imaging of their coronary arteries and characterisation of their coronary plaque burden. We will use advanced technology platforms to measure hundreds of thousands of small molecules in the blood, including, RNA, protein and metabolites, as well as genomic variations.  With the help of machine learning, we will then be able to train our systems to discover novel signatures of coronary plaque."

"This will allow us to develop new methods for early diagnosis. Our vision is for a simple blood test that your GP could order on a regular basis to detect the earliest phases of coronary heart disease, many years before a heart attack. If positive, your GP could prescribe life-saving drugs that stabilise the plaque, and prevent plaque progression and heart attack."

The gift will allow for the recruitment of two postdoctoral fellows and a support team as part of the Universitys Digital Sciences Initiative, which was launched last year.

Project lead on this work, Professor Jinman Kim from the Faculty of Engineering, said it was an excellent example of leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning in health research to open new avenues for disease prevention.

"Advances in artificial intelligence by researchers in the Faculty of Engineering allow us to sift through very large and complex data collections, such as the ones collected by the team of Professor Gemma Figtree, and discover patterns that would elude researchers who use manual processes. The discovery of such patterns will lead to new advances in the prevention and treatment of cardiac diseases." View more