'Big data' faculty member transitions to Olathe campus

Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020

Majid Jaberi-DourakiOLATHE — Majid Jaberi-Douraki, Ph.D., associate professor of mathematics at the Institute of Computational Comparative Medicine at Kansas State University, joins the team at K-State Olathe's campus.

While Jaberi-Douraki will continue to teach and be stationed at the Manhattan campus throughout the fall semester, his computational lab and several of his graduate students and postdoctoral students have transitioned to the Olathe campus so they can continue the lab's big data analysis operations without pause.

He and his family plan to relocate to Johnson County by October.

"We're delighted to have Dr. Jaberi-Douraki and the 1Data Project join the Olathe campus," said Jackie Spears, interim dean and CEO of K-State's Olathe campus. "His research complements the academic programs we offer in animal health, strengthening our campus' support of the animal health industry."

Jaberi-Douraki's research focuses on mathematical data science, modeling of biological and epidemiological science, dynamical systems, control theory and numerical analysis.

He co-leads the K-State and University of Missouri-Kansas City collaboration 1Data. The partnership cleans and standardizes preclinical human and animal health data and adds it to a data clearinghouse. The 1Data researchers and researchers around the world can then access and use that data to rapidly develop and test new therapeutics, drugs and medical technologies for people and animals.

Under the 1Data environment, Jaberi-Douraki and his team developed 1Drug Assist. The program, currently in beta, is a platform for precision and individualized medicine. Health care providers plug in the personal demographic information of a patient with either breast cancer or Type 2 diabetes and are recommended the top therapeutic drugs that will work best for that patient.

Researchers are continuing to refine the program and plan to add more diseases. They also developed a version of the program that veterinarians can use for companion animals.

Jaberi-Douraki also is an affiliated researcher with K-State's Johnson Cancer Research Center.

His work is published in multiple scientific publications, including the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, Companion Animal Medicine, Journal of Animal Science, Epidemiology and Infection, Advanced Functional Materials, ACS Applied Bio Materials, Nanotoxicology, Preventive veterinary medicine, Aquaculture, Frontiers in public health, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Journal of Biological Dynamics, PLoS ONE and Mathematical Biosciences.

Jaberi-Douraki earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Isfahan, a master's degree in applied mathematics from Amirkabir University of Technology and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Laval in Canada.