The Duke Single Cell Initiative (SCI) is hosting our annual colloquium focusing on single cell and spatial science on August 25th, 2026.
Internal, external, and commercial speakers will give sessions on the groundbreaking single cell, spatial, and metabolomic work happening at Duke, UNC, NCSU, and NCCU. We will also explore exciting technological advances being made in the field.
We were over-subscribed in 2025, so please register now!
Register for the 2026 SCI Colloquium!
2026 SCI Colloquium Agenda
Time | Speaker(s) | Affiliation | Talk Title |
|---|---|---|---|
8:15AM | Simon G. Gregory | Duke Dept. of Neurosurgery | Introduction |
Single cell – Yarui Diao, PhD (Cell Biology) | |||
8:30-8:50AM | Zainab Afzal | NCCU | Forever Impacts: A Single-Cell View of Developmental Toxicity |
8:50-9:10AM | Adam Gracz | UNC | Resolving biliary epithelial heterogeneity with single cell transcriptomics |
9:10-9:30AM | Mike Brown | Duke Dept. of Neurosurgery | Interrogating longitudinal myeloid cell states using live cell phenotyping |
9:30-10:30AM | 15’ Corporate talks | Cellanome/ Parse/Element/10xGenomics | |
Break (10:30 - 10:50 AM) | |||
Spatial - Purushothama Tata, PhD (Cell Biology) | |||
10:50-11:10AM | Melissa Troester | UNC | Spatial proximity of immune cells in breast cancer and long-term disease free interval |
11:10-11:30AM | Kyra Van Batavia | Duke (Hickey lab) | Toward Spatial Phenotypes of Cancer: Quantifying Borders, Gradients, and Organizational Heterogeneity with MINGL |
11:30-12:15PM | Rong Fan | Yale | Seeing RNA Biology in Action in Human Tissues |
Lunch (12:15 - 1:15 PM) | |||
Bioinformatics – Yi Zhang, PhD (Neurosurgery) | |||
1:15-2:00PM | Junyue Cao | Rockefeller | Scalable genomic approaches to investigate cellular dynamics in aging and disease |
2:00-2:20PM | Julia Louw | Duke (Khasraw lab) | Predicting Glioblastoma Recurrence Timing from Routine Histopathology Using Spatially Informed Machine Learning |
2:20-2:40PM | Xinxia Peng | NCSU | Single cell immune repertoire profiling in model organisms |
2:40-3:00PM | Weihang Zhang | Duke (Zhang lab) | Sub-cellular and multi-scale modeling of high-definition spatial omics with machine learning |
Break (3:00- 3:15 PM) | |||
Spatial cont’d – Erik Soderblum | |||
3:15-4:00PM | 15’ Corporate talks | Takara/Illumina/Quanterix | |
4:00-4:20PM | Lauren Whaley | Duke (Gregory lab) | Integrative single-nuclei spatial transcriptomic profiling of primary and recurrent human glioblastoma reveals novel therapeutic pathway |
4:20-4:40PM | Jamie Privratsky | Duke Dept. of Anesthesiology | Spatio-temporal myeloid-tubule interactions in healing after acute kidney injury |
4:40-5:00PM | Jeff Kuhn | Duke Proteomics and Metabolomics Core Facility | Spatial Mass Spectrometry: an Emerging Capability at Duke |
Corporate Speakers & Sponsors
- Cellanome
- Element Biosciences
- Illumina
- Takara Biosciences
- Quanterix
- Parse Biosciences
- 10x Genomics
- Standard Biosciences
- Miltenyi Biotec
- Bruker Spatial Biology
Thanks to everyone who took part in the single cell Initiative day-long colloquium in the 2025 spring semester! For pictures of the colloquium please visit the SCI-RIP photo album!
