I am pleased to announce the appointment of Qin Ma, PhD, as leader of the Immuno-Oncology Informatics Group (IOIG) within the Pelotonia Institute for Immuno-Oncology (PIIO) at the OSUCCC – James.

Composed of leading faculty from the Department of Biomedical Informatics, the IOIG provides data analytics for flow cytometry and mass cytometry; cytokine and chemokine ELISAs; viral neutralization assays; bulk and single RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq and ATAC-Seq; T-cell receptor repertoire sequencing; spatial transcriptomics data analysis; and mining of public data.

As leader of the IOIG, Dr. Ma will guide the recruitment of IOIG faculty and staff, develop computational approaches for novel insights and hypotheses in cancer immunotherapy, and build collaborations around immuno-oncological single-cell multi-omics, spatial transcriptomics and computational biology.

The IOIG mission is to assemble and organize a team of experts in biostatistics, bioinformatics and deep learning to systematically solve immuno-oncological problems. The top priority of the IOIG is to enhance collaborations and communications among PIIO members, aiming to bridge different research communities and facilitate program/grant development. Other priorities include training sessions that engage and invigorate PIIO faculty and students, and hosting esteemed internal and external researchers to present at seminars.

These IOIG activities will facilitate new and creative ways in which translational and interdisciplinary research can be coupled for broader impact. The success of these activities will promote computational and data sciences in translational research, drive interdisciplinary collaborations and support the PIIO mission.

Dr. Ma is an associate professor (with tenure) in the Department of BMI and serves as director for the Division of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He is a member of the Cancer Biology Program at the OSUCCC – James, where he is a highly productive and well-funded investigator who specializes in single-cell bioinformatics and functional genomics. He is principal investigator (PI) or multi-PI on four National Institutes of Health (NIH) and two National Science Foundation (NSF) grants.

In addition, Dr. Ma teaches several BMI graduate courses, including his coordination of BMI-8130 “Analysis and Applications of Genome-Scale Data,” a course that emphasizes single-cell data analysis. He has published 130 articles and has served as panel reviewer for several national sponsors such as NSF and NIH. He holds several other leadership positions within the Department of BMI, including leader of the AI/ML and Digital Health Training Program, and leader of the Cancer Systems Biology Research Group.

We are honored to have Dr. Ma as leader of the IOIG. His leadership will bolster the data-science needs of the PIIO and will help us eliminate the bottleneck of data analysis. This is a win for the PIIO and the greater immuno-oncology community! Together, we are working to create a cancer-free world by advancing immuno-oncology.