From Statistical Geometry to the SuperGenome and beyond - 30 years of innovative visual analytics concepts for bioinformatics

I would like to take every one on a personal journey, starting with research I did together with Andreas Dress who together with Manfred Eigen was the supervisor of my dissertation. During my thesis, I developed a visual analytics method called statistical geometry for the large-scale comparative analysis of genes. Geometries of quartets of sequences are computed from which, for example, the degree of tree-likeness of the data can be deduced. Since then a number of quartet-based methods mainly in the context of phylogenetics have been developed, of which I will show some seminal highlights. Statistical geometry is one example for an innovative discrete mathematical concept that has enabled broad and fascinating applications for bioinformatics. Ever since my PhD work, and highly inspired by Andreas Dress’ I have continued to develop in particular visual analytics concepts for the field of bioinformatics. One such example is the SuperGenome that I have already presented at the Intl. Symposium on Discrete Mathematics and Mathematical Biology in Leipzig on the occasion of Andreas Dress’ 75th birthday. I will talk about the original idea of the SuperGenome, further developments of it since then, and give an overview of other visual analytics methods for large-scale biological data developed in my group.