Orly Alter
Physicist and geneticist
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Orly Alter (Hebrew: אורלי אלטר) is an Israeli-American physicist, geneticist, and mathematician, and a USTAR associate professor of bioengineering and human genetics at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute and the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.[3] She has published on quantum measurement, genomic signal processing, and tensor decompositions.
Orly Alter | |
|---|---|
אורלי אלטר | |
Orly Alter in 2013 | |
| Born | Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Impossibility of determining the quantum wavefunction of a single system and a fundamental limit to external force detection (1999) |
| Doctoral advisor | Yoshihisa Yamamoto |
| Academic work | |
| Notable ideas | eigengene,[1] multi-tensor comparative spectral decomposition[2] |
Education and career
Alter began attending school at Tel Aviv University in Israel and graduated in October 1989 magna cum laude with her bachelors of science in physics.[3] After receiving her undergraduate degree, she began pursuing her Ph.D. in applied physics at the Stanford University in California, USA. She completed her Ph.D. with a thesis on "Impossibility of Determining the Quantum Wavefunction of a Single System and a Fundamental Limit to External Force Detection," under the mentorship of Yoshihisa Yamamoto in January 1999[4] and then moved onto a postdoctoral fellowship in genetics, remaining at Stanford.[5] Alter moved to the University of Utah in 2010, where she joined the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute as a USTAR Associate Professor of Bioengineering.[6]
Following this, she became a member of Cancer Control and Population Sciences Program, and was co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Prism AI Therapeutics in 2024.[7]
Research
Alter has one published book named Quantum Measurement of a Single System,[8][9] co-authored with Yamamoto, and another book in preparation, Genomic Signal Processing: Discovery of Principles of Nature from Matrix and Tensor Modeling of Large-Scale Molecular Biological Data.[10] Alter's work on finding patterns in DNA finds predictors indicative of a woman's risk for ovarian cancer,[11] and she uses mathematical models to improve the outcomes for women with ovarian cancer.[12][13][14]
Alter's team identified a DNA pattern as a predictor of survival in glioblastoma patients using new mathematical methods, which was reported in 2020.[15]
Awards and recognition
In 2005 Alter was selected by the International Linear Algebra Society to give the Linear Algebra and its Applications Lecture.[16][17] Alter was an American Association of Physicists in Medicine Science Council Session Winner in 2014.[18]
Selected publications
- Alter, Orly; Brown, Patrick O.; Botstein, David (29 August 2000). "Singular value decomposition for genome-wide expression data processing and modeling". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 97 (18): 10101–10106. Bibcode:2000PNAS...9710101A. doi:10.1073/pnas.97.18.10101. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 27718. PMID 10963673.
- Alter, Orly; Brown, Patrick O.; Botstein, David (18 March 2003). "Generalized singular value decomposition for comparative analysis of genome-scale expression data sets of two different organisms". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 100 (6): 3351–3356. Bibcode:2003PNAS..100.3351A. doi:10.1073/pnas.0530258100. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 152296. PMID 12631705.
- Omberg, Larsson; Golub, Gene H.; Alter, Orly (20 November 2007). "A tensor higher-order singular value decomposition for integrative analysis of DNA microarray data from different studies". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (47): 18371–18376. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10418371O. doi:10.1073/pnas.0709146104. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2147680. PMID 18003902.
- Alter, Orly. Genomic Signal Processing: Discovery of Principles of Nature from Matrix and Tensor Modeling. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-119-07837-1.