In this interview, Dr. Debashis Sahoo explains how his Boolean Lab at UC San Diego uses mathematical logic to revolutionize medical research. Unlike traditional AI and machine learning that rely on statistical averages and "black box" patterns, Sahoo’s approach utilizes Boolean rules to identify invariants, which are biological relationships that remain constant across data sets. This method has already yielded breakthroughs in colon cancer, where his team identified a specific gene that predicts survival rates, and in Alzheimer’s disease, where it uncovered a new mouse model for asymptomatic cases. By treating biological systems like hardware circuits, Sahoo aims to filter out messy data noise to find the fundamental laws of biology. Ultimately, the goal is to create trustworthy clinical impacts by moving medicine toward a more predictable, engineering-based framework.
