M.Sc. Anja Wolpers, a graduate of the Master's program in Computer Science, was awarded the INFO.RO Prize for the Best Master's Thesis in 2024 for her outstanding thesis “Disease-based Phenotypical Gene Priorization.” The award ceremony was held by the Informatik-Forum Rostock e.V. (INFO.RO) association at this year's summer party for computer science and mathematics. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil. Adelinde Uhrmacher at the Institute for Visual and Analytic Computing. The prize is endowed with 400 euros.
The master's thesis was written in collaboration with the Rostock-based company Limbus Medical Technologies GmbH and focuses on software-supported diagnosis of genetic diseases. A central problem in medical diagnostics is filtering out the pathogenic variants responsible for a patient's disease from millions of individual DNA variations. Previous ontology-based methods of phenotypic gene prioritization are limited, as many genes can be assigned to multiple disease patterns.
Ms. Wolpers developed an innovative algorithm that addresses these challenges through disease-based phenotypic gene prioritization, leading to improved results in half of the cases studied. The work is impressive not only for its scientific content, but also for its extraordinary independence and clarity of presentation in a highly complex field. The results are to be incorporated into a planned software product from Limbus Medtec; a conference paper is also in preparation. Ms. Wolpers' commitment beyond research is also remarkable: she won a Science Slam trophy in 2024 and decided to remain faithful to science despite an offer from the company.
With this work, Ms. Wolpers is making a substantial contribution to medical informatics and impressively demonstrating how research, practical relevance, and social relevance can be combined.
Anja Wolpers was awarded the INFO.RO Prize for the Best Master's Thesis in 2024
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