Paul Perco, PhD, PD

Paul Perco, PhD, PD

Computational Biology Lead at Delta 4 GmbH

Senior Researcher at the Medical University Innsbruck

Biography

I am a computational biologist and translational researcher making use of big data to support optimal diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. My research interests include the analysis of high-throughput Omics data forming the basis for network modeling of disease pathophysiology and drug mechanism of action. Ultimate goal is the identification of novel biomarkers, drug targets, as well as optimal treatment options for age-related diseases within the realm of precision medicine.

Interests
  • Bioinformatics of ‘Omics’ data
  • Biomarker discovery and development
  • Network biology in disease
  • Drug repositioning
  • Scientific data analysis
Education
  • Habilitation in Bioinformatics, 2019

    Medical University Innsbruck

  • PhD in Microbiology and Genetics, 2005

    University of Vienna

  • MSc in Microbiology and Genetics, 2003

    University of Vienna

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Computational Biology Lead
May 2021 – Present Vienna, Austria
 
 
 
 
 
Computational Biologist (part-time)
Nov 2019 – Apr 2021 Vienna, Austria
 
 
 
 
 
Senior Researcher (part-time)
May 2021 – Present Innsbruck, Austria
 
 
 
 
 
Senior Researcher
Dec 2016 – Apr 2021 Innsbruck, Austria
 
 
 
 
 
Head of Applications
Jan 2012 – Sep 2016 Vienna, Austria
 
 
 
 
 
Visiting Scientist
Mar 2011 – Mar 2011 Rehovot, Israel
Group of Doron Lancet (GeneCards team)
 
 
 
 
 
Computational Biologist
Feb 2008 – Dec 2011 Vienna, Austria
 
 
 
 
 
Visiting Scientist
Jun 2007 – Jun 2007 Leipzig, Germany
Group of Peter Stadler
 
 
 
 
 
Postdoctoral Fellow
Nov 2005 – Jan 2008 Vienna, Austria
 
 
 
 
 
Visiting Scientist
Aug 2004 – Nov 2004 Vancouver, Canada
Group of Wyeth Wasserman
 
 
 
 
 
PhD Student
Sep 2003 – Nov 2005 Vienna, Austria
PhD thesis title: Numerical models of coregulation and metabolic network analysis based on genome wide gene expression patterns
 
 
 
 
 
MSc Student
Oct 2002 – Jul 2003 Vienna, Austria
Master thesis title: Bioinformatics analysis of differential gene expression in human kidney tissue

Accomplish­ments

Author of > 100 scientific publications
in the area of computational biology, biomarker discovery, drug target identification, in-silico drug screening, network biology, patient stratification, precision medicine, translational research
Habilitation in Bioinformatics
Habilitation thesis title: Network-based bioinformatics disease and drug modeling supporting biomarker and drug target identification
Election into the scientific steering committee of the BEAt-DKD project
an EU-funded project in the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) framework entitled Biomarker Enterprise to Attack Diabetic Kidney Disease
Technology readiness level (TRL) 9 of the e.valuation software platform
for biomarker, target, and drug evaluation in the context of human diseases

Skills

Data mining - Exploratory data analysis - Data modeling - Statistical inference - Machine learning - Data visualization and communication - Scientific writing

Industry knowledge

Bioinformatics - Life sciences - Biotechnology - Genomics - Molecular biology - Biobanking

Disease areas of interest

Nephrology - Cardiology - Oncology

Tools and Technologies

R - SQL - HTML - CSS - LaTeX - Cytoscape

Commonly used R packages

Data wrangling

tidyverse (tidyr - dplyr - readr - stringr - forcats - tibble - purrr) - readxl - widyr - rvest - broom - DT - htmltab - jsonlite - xml2 - mice - reshape2

Statistical analysis and machine learning

caret - caretEnsembl - fdrtool - finalfit - glmnet - multtest - NBClust - outliers - randomForest - ranger - survival - survminer

Data visualization

ggplot2 - plotly - gganimate - ggalluvial - alluvial - formattable - cowplot - corrgram - corrplot - circlize - UpSetR - ggridges - waffle - leaflet - ComplexHeatmap - hiver - memery - plotROC

Communication and reporting

R markdown - flexdashboard - shiny - kableExtra - stargazer

Bioinformatics analyses

biomaRt - chromoMap - DESeq - DOSE - gCMAP - GEOquery - homologene - KEGGgraph - KEGGREST - limma - pathview - rentrez - sizepower - toppGO