News & Updates
2025
October 21–23
The Early Detection of Cancer Conference, Portland, USA
Presented three posters and two pitch talks highlighting advances in interpretable modeling of spatial and multi-omics single-cell data.
Conference Book (PDF)
October 17
Oregon State University Postdoctoral Symposium, Corvallis, USA
Presented my poster Spatial Analysis of Androgen Receptor’s Role in Prostate Cancer.
October 3
Biology Department Fall Seminar Series, Reed College, Portland, USA
Delivered an invited seminar, From Single Cells to Tumor Neighborhoods – Interpretable AI for Cancer Biology.
Seminar Announcement
September 17
Award: Best Talk, Postdoctoral Lightning Talks, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, USA
Received the Best Talk Award for Turning Chaos Into Clarity: How Math and AI Reveal Cancer’s Hidden Rules (TED-style format).
Watch the talk
September 4
Knight Cancer Institute Science Day, Portland, USA
Presented research on interpretable machine learning models for integrative cancer analysis.
August
Published my first senior author paper!:
Kupp, S., Vangordon, I., Gonen, M., Esener, S., Eksi, S. E., Ak, Ç.
Interpretable and Integrative Analysis of Single-Cell Multiomics with scMKL.
Communications Biology (2025), 8, 1160.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-08533-7
Our paper Interpretable and Integrative Single-Cell Multiomics Analysis with scMKL was featured on the Communications Biology homepage along with the submitted cover art.
Our work was highlighted on LinkedIn and recognized as the state-of-the-art multiomics integration tool.
Read the feature
June
The Early Detection of Cancer Conference, Portland, USA
Served on the Abstract Review Committee for the 2025 conference, contributing to the scientific review and selection process.
Conference Book (PDF)
June 12
Panel Discussion: “Next Generation Leaders”, The Mission Moment, OHSU Foundation Mini-Conference
Participated in a panel, presenting our work and collaborations at CEDAR. Conference Site
April 25–30
AACR Annual Meeting, San Diego, USA
Presented research on interpretable multi-omics modeling for cancer detection and tumor biology. Two abstracts were published in the AACR Proceedings, highlighting advances in Epigenetic Configuration (EpiConfig) and spatial modeling approaches.
AACR Meeting Site
The spatial cellular landscape of Gleason pattern 3 and 4 prostate tumors
Ç Ak et al. Cancer Research 85 (8 Supplement 1), 6461 (2025).
https://doi.org/10.1158/1538-7445.AM2025-6461Multimodal topic modeling for single-cell multiomics
Ç Ak et al. Cancer Research 85 (8 Supplement 1), 5001 (2025).
https://doi.org/10.1158/1538-7445.AM2025-5001
2024
September 10–12
3rd Annual Spatial Biology Summit, Stanford, USA
Presented analyses of androgen receptor spatial signaling in prostate cancer across multiple resolutions.
Watch Presentation on YouTube
Summit Page