About this project
It may seem as if cells do not move, but cell movement is crucial in health and disease. Biological processes such as defence and cancer growth are controlled by movements of cells. With microscopes, scientists can film that movement. But these videos are difficult to analyse. That is why, in this project, Inge Wortel is developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help with this.
With this new AI, cell films can be translated faster and better into new knowledge about our immune system. This is not as simple as it sounds, she explains,"'AI can be very powerful, but it can also just make totally wrong predictions. So especially if we use AI to learn something completely new, we can't just trust the outcomes."
That is why, in this new project, Wortel combines AI with computer simulations of cell movement. This allows researchers to develop AI faster and, above all, to test it very thoroughly - even for new research for which little data is yet available. This accelerates discoveries in important areas such as immunology and cancer research.
About Inge Wortel
Inge Wortel studied molecular life sciences and chemistry at Radboud University. After a master's degree in Molecular Mechanisms of Disease, she started her PhD research at the Department of Tumour Immunology at Radboudumc, where she worked on computer simulations of cell movement. Since her PhD in 2021, she has been working at the Data Science department on reliable ways to gain knowledge from data in biological research.