Benos Lab » College of Public Health and Health Professions

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.

Evaluating undetermined low dose CT scan nodules

Representative Recent publications

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]
K.L. Bushur, C. Riley, A. Saferali, P. Castaldi, G. Zhang, F. Aguet, K.G. Ardlie, P. Durda, W.C. Johnson, S. Kasela, Y. Liu, A. Manichaikul, S.S. Rich, J.I. Rotter, J. Smith, K.D. Taylor, R.P. Tracy, T. Lappalainen, R.G. Barr, F. Sciurba, C.P. Hersh, P.V. Benos, “Distinct COPD subtypes in former smokers revealed by gene network perturbation analysis”, Respiratory Research (2023) 24:30. [Abstract] [Article]