Natasa Przulj

Natasa Przulj

Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación

Life & Medical Sciences

Prof. Przulj is an elected member of Academia Europaea --The Academy of Europe (AE), The Serbian Royal Academy (SKANU), a Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS), and a Scientific Advisor of the Mathematics Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU). She is an ICREA Research Professor at Barcelona Supercomputing Center as of January 1st, 2019. In 2014, she was awarded the British Computer Society Roger Needham Award. She received three prestigious European Research Council (ERC) grants: ERC Consolidator (2018-25), ERC PoC (2020-2022) and ERC Starting (2012-17). She held prestigious USA NSF Awards. Her research has also been supported by other large governmental and industrial grants. She has been a Full Professor (2016-now) at UCL, Assoc. Professor (2012-2016) and Assist. Professor (2009-2012) at Imperial College London and an Assistant Prof. at Univ. of California-Irvine (2005-2009). She obtained a PhD in Computer Science from Univ. of Toronto in 2005.

Research interests

Molecular and clinical data integration for precision medicine: patient stratification, biomarker discovery, drug re-purposing, drug discovery, disease re-classification. Data analytics, modeling, fusion, dynamics, applied to clinical, molecular and biological data. Algorithms for uncovering molecular mechanisms of disease from systems-level “omics” data. Molecular networks: interactome evolution, dynamics, alignment, function prediction. Large-scale economic data analysis, fusion and modeling the dynamics of economic systems. Computational graph theory, algorithms, artificial inteligence, models.

Selected publications

- Doria-Belenguer S, Xenos A, Ceddia G, Malod-Dognin N & Pržulj N 2023, 'A functional analysis of omic network embedding spaces reveals key altered functions in cancer', Bioinformatics, 39, 5, btad281.

- Gureghian V, Herbst H, Kozar I, et al. 2023, 'A multi-omics integrative approach unravels novel genes and pathways associated with senescence escape after targeted therapy in NRAS mutant melanoma', Cancer Gene Therapy, .

- Malod-Dognin N, Ceddia G, Gvozdenov M, et al. 2023, 'A phenotype driven integrative framework uncovers molecular mechanisms of a rare hereditary thrombophilia', Plos One, 18, 4, e0284084.

- Xenos A, Malod-Dognin N, Zambrana C & Pržulj N 2023, 'Integrated Data Analysis Uncovers New COVID-19 Related Genes and Potential Drug Re-Purposing Candidates', International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 24, 2, 1431.

 

Selected research activities

Invited Talks:

Gave 6 keynote / invited talks at prestigious places
, e.g. keynotes at the NetSci´23, ISMB NetBio COSI´23 and German Bioinformatics Conference´23.

Competitive Research Funding:

23. Artificial Intelligence Research Alliance (AIRA) Ramon Llull Post-doctoral Pro-
gramme
Title: RAMON LLULL-AIRA Postdoctoral Programme
Co-PI: Natasa Przulj, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)
Funding Organization: European Commission, Horizon Europe (HORIZON-MSCA-COFUND-
2022) and the Catalan Government
Funding period: 2024 – 2027
Funds received: €9,455,811 (out of which four post-doc positions to BSC)
22. Spanish State Research Agency and the Ministry of Science and Innovation MCIN grant
PID2022-141920NB-I00
Title: Towards a Better Understanding of Omic Data and Disease (TOBUODAD)
PI: Natasa Przulj,
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)
Funding period: 2024 – 2027
Funds received: ≈ €300,000

Student Supervision

Ph.D. Alumni:
Carme Zambrana, Ph.D., 2023
Sergio Doria, Ph.D., 2023,
Daniel Tello, Ph.D., 2023
She served on Advisory Boards, organized conferences, reviewed international grants and papers for prestigious journals.