Sergei Maslov, PhD, Co-Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Modeling (CAIM) at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, Professor of Bioengineering and Physics, Bliss Faculty Scholar, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. 

Dr. Maslov has a broad expertise in computational modeling of complex biological systems with particular emphasis on assembly of microbial ecosystems, evolution of bacterial genomes, and dynamics of complex biomolecular networks. He is also interested in applying machine learning techniques to personalized prediction of cancer drug combinations, transcriptional regulatory networks, and microbiome-related projects. 

Abstract
The human gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem, in which hundreds of microbial species and metabolites coexist, in part due to an extensive network of cross-feeding interactions. To understand the metabolic flow in such multi-level trophic ecosystems we studied a predictive model in which microbes consume and secrete metabolites in multiple iterative steps. This model allowed us to predict the metabolic environment of the gut from its microbial composition [1] and even to reconstruct some of the previously unknown cross-feeding relationships between species [2]. Mechanistic models are naturally complemented by machine learning approaches [3,4] for the development of which we leveraged the expertise of the newly established Center for Artificial Intelligence and Modeling (CAIM) at IGB. I will use the example of this collaboration to discuss how CAIM can help you to achieve your own research goals.