Antibody Engineering Hackathon 2025: Guest Speakers Dr. David Koelle and Dean Lee

This video recording from World Digital Biology features two guest speakers from the 2025 Antibody Engineering Hackathon. This hackathon provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to create research projects related to antibody engineering. During this guest speaker session, Dr. David Koelle from the University of Washington Virology Research Clinic gave a presentation on finding antibodies to the chickenpox virus in shingles lesions. The second guest speaker, Dean Lee, data scientist at Novartis, presented on career pathways for aspiring computational biologists.

Dr. Koelle's presentation covered research objectives and methods used, including single cell sequencing and human monoclonal antibodies (humAb). Dr. Koelle discussed topics that included desired effects of antibody therapy, examples of antiviral antibody drugs, bioinformatics skills used for data processing, and key wet lab and dry lab skills central to humAb work.

In the second speaker session, Dean Lee advised students on career opportunities in computational biology. Lee discussed roles in this field, pathways such as industry and academia, and the value of computational skills for biologists. The presentation went into detail on key skills for students to build for career success, including domain knowledge, data modalities, and data analysis methods.

This video runs 01:09:06 hour in length. Other videos in this series are available to view separately.