We are a diverse, interdisciplinary team who likes to tackle important questions in systems medicine by developing and using novel machine learning algorithms. Our ultimate goal is to identify risk factors and mechanisms affecting aging and contributing to the onset and progression of chronic diseases and cancer. We also develop predictive methods and tools that can directly improve health. We use probabilistic graphical models and other machine learning methods to integrate and mine high-dimensional, multi-modal biomedical data and to investigate biological processes pertinent to health and disease.
CausalMGM: causal discovery on mixed data types
Web server: https://db.cs.pitt.edu/causalmgm/

WordCloud of Benos Lab research
From titles and abstracts of Benos’ group 2020-2022.

Representative Recent publications
- T.C. Lovelace, M.H. Ryu, M. Jia, P. Castaldi, F.C. Sciurba, C.P. Hersh, P.V. Benos, “Development and validation of a mortality risk prediction model for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a cross-sectional study using probabilistic graphical modelling”, eClinicalMedicine (2024) 75:102786. [Abstract] [Article] [medRxiv]
- R.W. Gregg, C.M. Karoleski, E.K. Silverman, F.C. Sciurba, D.L. DeMeo, P.V. Benos, “Identification of Factors Directly Linked to Incident Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Causal Graph Modeling Study”, PLoS Medicine (2024) 21:e1004444. [Abstract] [Article]
- W. Zeng, A. Thatayatikom, N. Winn, T.C. Lovelace, I. Bhattacharyya, T. Schrepfer, A. Shah, R. Gonik, P.V. Benos#, S. Cha#, “The novel Florida Scoring System for stratifying children suspected of Sjögren’s disease: findings from the first data-driven cross-sectional study applied to a rare pediatric cohort”. Lancet Rheumatology (2024) 6:e279-e290. [Abstract] [Article]
- M. Jia*, K. Sayed*, M G. Kapetanaki*, W. Dion, L. Rosas, S. Irfan, E. Valenzi, A.L. Mora, R.A. Lafyatis, M. Rojas, B. Zhu, P.V. Benos, “LEF1 isoforms regulate cellular senescence and aging”, Aging Cell (2023) e14024. [Abstract] [Article]
- F. Shan, A.R. Cillo, C. Cardello, D.Y. Yuan, S.R. Kunning, J. Cui, C. Lampenfeld, A.M. Williams, A.P. McDonough, R.L. Ferris, T.C. Bruno, C.J. Workman, P.V. Benos, D.A.A. Vignali, “Integrated BATF transcriptional network regulates suppressive intratumoral regulatory T cells”, Science Immunology (2023) 8:adf6717. [Abstract] [Article]
- M. Jia*, P.A. Agudelo Garcia*, J.A. Ovando-Ricardez, T. Tabib, H.T. Bittar, R.A. Lafyatis, A.L. Mora†, P.V. Benos†, M. Rojas†, “Transcriptional Changes of the Aging Lung”, Aging Cell (2023) 22:e13969. [Abstract] [Article]
News & Highlights
Minxue has a first author paper accepted in…
Congratulations to our group member, Minxue Jia, for the acceptance of his first author paper in Molecular Systems Biology. His paper is entitled…

Tyler co-authors a paper in Critical Care Medicine
Congratulations to Tyler Lovelace for the acceptance of his Crit Care Med paper , which is entitled “Plasma Levels of Soluble Suppression of…

Shaira co-authors a paper in AJRCMB (Red journal)
Congratulations to Shaira Kee for the acceptance of his AJRCMB paper (“Red journal”), which is entitled “eNAMPT Is a Novel DAMP and Therapeutic…
