Dr. Mondal’s research area is Bioinformatics and Data Analytics in general. Three major research directions are: (1) Diffusion Kernel to Extract Meaningful Biological Information from PPI Network and Its Applications, (2) Network-Based Disease Analysis, and (3) Epigenetics-Based Analysis of Cognitive Responses.
Diffusion Kernel to Extract Meaningful Biological Information from PPI Network and Its Applications: Protein Subcellular Localization, Protein Subnetwork Biomarker Identification, Early Warning Signals for Human Diseases, and Identifying Missing Connections in a Network. Diffusion kernel is a computational framework, which is based on the physical phenomenon of gas diffusion in a medium, which is also equivalent to the Computer Science concept, random walk on a graph. It provides suitable computational framework to extract meaningful biological information from PPI network.
Network-Based Disease Analysis: Graph-theoretic to analyze disease progression in molecular level using protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, gene expression, and epigenetic alterations. Usually, a group of proteins or genes work together to perform a biological function or to cause a disease. Two important research questions we are addressing are: (a) Do the proteins or genes form a specific graph structure for a disease stage? (b) How do the disease causing signals transform from stage to stage? Or, do the genes for different stages of a disease form a specific graph structure?
Epigenetics-Based Analysis of Cognitive Responses: Cognition is a highly complex process that engages multiple brain functions, most of which are not fully understood. But proper functioning of cognitive processes such as complex attention, efficiency of information processing, executive functioning, processing speed, and both short and long-term memory are essential for better interpretation of a complex context or environment like war field. Knowing biological or genetic basis for cognitive processes may shed some light on the fundamental understanding of cognitive responses. Studies showed that aberrant epigenetic modifications to certain genes lead to cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Schizophrenia (Scz). So, our hypothesis is that the cognitive responses can be explained in terms of epigenetic modifications.
