May 19, 2026
The NLM Division of Intramural Research (DIR) is pleased to welcome Yogesh Goyal, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cell & Developmental Biology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine to present his lecture entitled “Single-Cell Cartography of Plasticity: Transposing Perturbations onto Unseen Phenotypes” at our upcoming NLM Colloquia on Biomedical Data Science and Computational Biology Research.
Please join us on Friday, May 29, 2026, at 11:00am ET at the Lister Hill Center Auditorium (LHC, Building 38A) and online via MS Teams. We also welcome you to share this event with your colleagues and others who may be interested.
The DIR invites speakers with expertise in bioinformatics and biomedical discovery, including computational biology research, computational health research, and related areas of interest, to present in our NLM Colloquia series. Visit our NLM DIR Lectures webpage or reach out to NLMColloquia@nih.gov to learn more.
Abstract:Â
Single-cell variability within genetically identical populations can produce divergent cell fates under identical perturbations, a phenomenon broadly referred to as phenotypic plasticity and most clearly seen in cancer, where rare cells evade therapy and seed resistance. In this talk, I will describe our work on single-cell cartography of plasticity, using lineage tracing to map and track plasticity and its clonal manifestations over time, and to define the landscape on which heterogeneous fate decisions arise. I will then show how perturbation datasets can be leveraged to transpose functional signals learned in one context onto unseen phenotypes in another. My group’s work provides a general framework for using disparate datasets and systems to study cell-fate variability in cancer and in other settings such as differentiation and reprogramming.
Biosketch:Â
Yogesh Goyal, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. His research integrates single‑cell genomics, live‑cell imaging, and quantitative modeling to reveal how cells make fate decisions and adapt to stress during development, regeneration, and disease. Dr. Goyal earned his PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University, where he investigated how dynamic chemical signals guide animal development. He then completed postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. As a Schmidt Science Fellow at Penn, he transitioned into single‑cell biology, focusing on how cells organize, communicate, and respond to pathogenic perturbations. The Goyal Lab combines theory, computation, and single‑cell–resolved experiments to track and control cellular plasticity and fate choices in health and disease, with a particular emphasis on cancer. Dr. Goyal is deeply committed to crossing disciplinary boundaries and collaborating broadly across scientific fields.
