1.1 Disease (particularly cancer) Detection

As depicted in the famous “Man as Industrial Palace”, human body can be viewed as a chemical plant. This picture was conceived when German chemical industry was world’s most advanced. Therefore, disease (such as cancer) detection in biomedical research and fault detection in process systems engineering share many similarities:

• Chemical plant can have leaks, faulty valves, etc. human body can have similar organ failures, deficiencies, etc.
• All faults, plant or human will result in system behavior that deviates from normal behavior, i.e., symptoms.
• Some faults/diseases obvious, others not. Earlier detection is always desirable.

1.2 Cancer Informatics

In cancer research, advances in high-throughput sequencing, imaging, and profiling technologies are producing massive and exponentially increasing amount of data. On the other hand, living systems are dynamic and complex, and their behavior cannot be predicted from the properties of individual parts. Therefore, we believe an integrated systems engineering and data analytics approach is essential in addressing these challenges.

We have applied systems engineering enhanced data analytics to biomarker discovery, health disparity assessment and methodology development. Our current research focuses on the development of integrated systems engineering approaches to social behavioral research areas including childhood speech disorder