My name is Marton Olbei, I am a research associate in the Korcsmaros group. My main scientific interest revolves around trying to understand how the immune system talks to itself through cytokines. I am trying to achieve this by creating cytokine-cytokine networks, in an attempt to capture how certain cytokines regulate other cytokines.

Cytokines are small proteins that are important for communication between immune cells. They are involved in a variety of immune responses, including inflammation, immune activation, and cell growth and differentiation. Cytokine-cytokine networks are graphical representations of the relationships between different cytokines. These networks can grant insight into how cytokines interact with each other and regulate immune responses.

Building cytokine-cytokine networks involves collecting data from experiments that measure the levels of different cytokines in response to different stimuli. This data is then used to create a network that shows how cytokines are connected to each other. By analyzing cytokine-cytokine networks, I am trying to identify key cytokine regulatory pathways, and identify potential therapeutic targets for Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

We published an iteration of a cytokine-cytokine network as a network resource called CytokineLink (https://github.com/korcsmarosgroup/CytokineLink). This resource contains cytokine-cytokine interactions of main tissue and blood cell types based on expression data from the Human Protein Atlas. I completed my PhD in a joint project between the Earlham Institute and Quadram Institute in Norwich, where I generated interaction networks for the pathogen Salmonella enterica (http://salmonet.org). My other professional interests are teaching the computational methods we use in our work, and data visualisation.

My hobbies include going on runs with my dog Mimi, photography, and cooking.