Course Description
Please join us for this free webinar series where FAES faculty expand on topics they teach in their FAES courses. please note you will receive the Teams link to join the webinar at 11:15am the day of the event. You will have to register with Teams to join.
FAES Educational Webinar Series: What You Can Discover with Single-Cell Sequencing: A Field Guide to scRNA-seq Applications
July 22, 2026 from 12 - 12:30PM ET
Location: Line Online (Teams)
Speaker: Rajee Ganesan, Ph.D. Candidate, Carnegie Mellon University (BIOF 555, BIOF 556)
Single-cell RNA sequencing has revolutionized the study of genomics. Here, we discuss just a few applications of scRNA-seq downstream analysis, ranging from identifying cell-type-specific gene expression to uncovering regulatory evolution across species. We'll show how to use the bioinformatics pipeline established in BIOF 555/556 as the foundation for answering large-scale biological questions. Whether you're interested in disease, development, or evolution, learn how to turn single-cell datasets into meaningful biological insights!
Rajee Ganesan is a Biological Sciences Ph.D. candidate in the Pfenning lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Her thesis studies vocal learning at a computational level, specifically enhancer evolution and comparative genomics across mammalian and avian clades. Rajee received her Bachelor’s Degree from University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She has served as a teaching assistant and instructor for BIOF 555 and BIOF 556, the FAES course series on Single Cell Sequencing, for three years.
Click here to view an archive of our past webinars, many with full recordings.
Join FAES for the Following Upcoming Events:
FAES Science Insight Series: Trust Through Knowledge Grounding: AI Agents in Biomedicine
June 9, 2026 from 11:45 – 1:00 pm ET (must arrive by 12PM)
Location: FAES Learning Labs Classrooms
Speaker: Zhiyong Lu, Ph.D., FACMI, FIAHSI, Senior Investigator, NIH, Professor of Computer Science (Adjunct), UIUC
Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have enabled powerful AI agents for biomedical research, yet their adoption in high-stakes settings remains limited by concerns about hallucination, opacity, and reliability. In this talk, I discuss how expert-curated domain knowledge can be used to help mitigate these challenges in general-purpose LLMs. Drawing on real-world systems and case studies such as GeneAgent (Nature Methods 2025), I will highlight design principles for building AI agents that are scientifically sound, interpretable, and suitable for biomedical research and clinical applications.
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Virtual Information Session: FAES Fall Programming
July 16, 2026 from 12 – 12:30PM ET
Location: Online Synchronous
Join the FAES Academic Programs Team to learn more about our fall courses, workshops, and our scholarship program.
Register now
FAES Science Insight Series: Microscopic Imaging of the Retina in Patients Using Adaptive Optics
July 21, 2026 from 11:45 – 1:00 pm ET (must arrive by 12PM)
Location: FAES Learning Labs Classrooms
Speaker: Johnny Tam, Ph.D., Senior Investigator, NEI
Adaptive optics is a technology used in modern large astronomical telescopes for correcting aberrations in earth’s atmosphere. In this talk, I will describe how adaptive optics has transformed the field of retinal imaging, with examples of new clinical insights from studying patients with rare diseases at the NIH Clinical Center.
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The Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) at NIH seeks to foster education and research in the biomedical sciences by providing instruction at the cutting edge of biological science and its evolving applications. Our goals also include responding to the educational and cultural needs of the NIH community and projecting FAES educational assets globally. All courses and workshops are open to the public. NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY AS TO STUDENTS FAES admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin, sex, disability, or age in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship programs, and other school-administered programs.
