Speaker Profile

Martha Carlin

Biography
Martha began her career with Arthur Andersen after graduating with honors from the University of Kentucky with a BS in accounting. Early training at Andersen included a process called “transaction flow review” an approach to complex systems thinking. This process maps the flow of transactions in a business to identify weak points and systemic risks. Martha has applied this systems-based thinking throughout her career solving complex problems. In 2002, her husband was diagnosed with PD and she applied her systems expertise to understanding this complex disease. Martha is a self-taught scientist who studied across many fields from plant and soils biology, nutrition, chemistry, molecular biology, infectious disease, genetics, epigenetics, proteins, to neuroscience in search of connections. TBC has built an innovation engine for the microbome. They have a sample base of subjects age 1 to 102, fostered collaboration in PD microbiome research, and developed a strain bank of 2,000+ species of bacteria.

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Talk
Uses And Challenges Of Microbiome Data In Personalized And Population Medicine
This session will discuss the potential of metagenomic microbiome data in personalized medicine, including in the potential identification of emerging population infection disease. We will cover the basics of metagenomic data - bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protists as well as antibiotic resistance and virulence genes and their implications in treatment and pathogenicity. Additionally, we will discuss gaps in physician training, changing perspectives needed in infectious disease and the difficulty in translating single rather than time series samples for effective diagnostics.