Marija Pizurica

CRIG member
Marija Pizurica


Doctoral fellow - Dept. of Information Technology, IDLab, Ghent University
Visiting student researcher  - Gevaert Lab, Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics research, Stanford University
Principal investigator: prof. Kathleen Marchal (PhD)

 

Research focus

My research focuses on integrating multimodal data in cancer, primarily genomics and histopathology. Genomic testing is expensive and not always readily available, whereas histopathology slides are routinely collected for diagnosis. I investigate how genomic features can be associated with morphological changes in histology images by imputing one modality from the other. This approach has the potential to provide a cost-efficient alternative/guidance for genomic testing, enabling more accessible and personalized cancer prognostication and treatment planning.
 

Biography

Marija Pizurica pursues an interdisciplinary doctoral degree in Bioinformatics and Computer Science Engineering at Ghent University, under the guidance of prof. Kathleen Marchal. She is co-advised by prof. Olivier Gevaert at Stanford University, where she spends half of her PhD as a Visiting Student Researcher, supported by fellowships from the Belgian American Education Foundation and FWO. 
 

Key publications

  • Digital profiling of gene expression from histology images with linearized attention. Nature Communications, 15(1), 9886. (2024)
  • Whole slide imaging-based prediction of TP53 mutations identifies an aggressive disease phenotype in prostate cancer. Cancer Research, 83(17), 2970-2984. (2023)
  • Synthetic multimodal data modelling for data imputation. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 1-5. (2024)
  • Multimodal data fusion for cancer biomarker discovery with deep learning. Nature machine intelligence, 5(4), 351-362. (2023)
  • Generation of synthetic whole-slide image tiles of tumours from RNA-sequencing data via cascaded diffusion models. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 1-13. (2024)
     

Contact & links

  • Lab address: 
    1) Dept. of Information Technology, IDLab, Ghent University,
        iGent Toren, Technologiepark 126, 9052 Gent
    2) Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics research,
        Stanford University, 1265 Welch Rd, Stanford, CA 94305
  • LinkedIn
  • Patents: F Carrillo-perez, M Pizurica, O Gevaert - US Patent App. 18/538,743, 2024
  • Marija Pizurica is interested to receive invitations for presentations or talks