Co-organized by the Data Science in Systems Biology (DaiSyBio) group and the MDSI, Francesca Finotello, Associate Professor at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Digital Science Center (DiSC) and Head of the Computational Biomedicine Group at the University of Innsbruck, introduced modern computational strategies for uncovering the cellular makeup of complex tissues.

Finotello, Visiting Professor Fellow at the DaiSyBio group of MDSI Core Member Prof. Markus List, gave this research talk as part of the MDSI Doctoral Training Program. She highlighted how deconvolution methods have advanced from early immune‑focused tools to flexible, single‑cell‑informed approaches capable of resolving diverse cell types across tissues and disease contexts. A key focus was the tumor microenvironment, where integrating bulk RNA‑seq, single‑cell data, and spatial transcriptomics enables deeper insights into immune infiltration and tissue architecture. 
Prof. Finotello also presented new developments from her group, including omnideconv, a benchmarking ecosystem for deconvolution methods, and rectangle, a high‑resolution algorithm designed to improve accuracy and handle uncharacterized cell fractions efficiently, and a particular highlight of her talk. 
The talk sparked engaging discussions among researchers from data science, biology, and medicine, underscoring the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for advancing biomedical understanding.

Many thanks to Francesca Finotello for sharing these exciting developments and for the inspiring discussions afterward.