EP 260: How AI is reshaping genomics, disease prediction, and biosecurity with Jeffrey Barrett of the University of Helsinki

This week on The Genetics Podcast, Patrick is joined by Dr. Jeffrey Barrett, Group Leader at the Ellis Institute Finland and the University of Helsinki. They discuss using AI and federated biobank data to stratify common chronic diseases, how LLMs reading clinical notes in Finland's health registries can reveal treatment response, how AI is changing the way scientists research and train, and what the UK's COVID genome sequencing effort means for biosecurity.Show Notes0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast01:00 Welcome to Jeff 02:08 Jeff's research focus for his new lab, including molecular subtyping of common chronic diseases with AI06:18 Barriers to pooling biobank data across research environments for federated AI models11:00 Why Jeff expects larger datasets to make complex models better at predicting disease13:34 The three disease areas Jeff's lab will target first: cardiometabolic, inflammatory and neuropsychiatric19:41 Using LLMs to read clinician notes in Finland's health registries for treatment response24:50 How Jeff uses AI in his research and where humans still need to read and review31:08 Using Claude to understand papers and the gaps in its literature searches32:14 Jeff on AI solving open problems in mathematics and biology, and where researchers fit35:48 Simultaneous discoveries and why lab data generation still needs experts39:01 Jeff's COVID genome sequencing at Sanger and what it means for AI and biosecurity43:16  Closing remarks