The Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center will host Aranyak Goswami, an assistant professor of computational biology with the U of A System Division of Agriculture, at 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 19, in Bell Engineering 2267. Goswami's research harnesses the power of multi-omics integration, statistical genetics and machine learning to decode the complex interplay between the human microbiome and neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression, autism and schizophrenia.

Abstract: The dynamic interplay between host genetics and gut microbiota contributes to neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression, autism and schizophrenia. By integrating fecal metagenomic data (FGFP) with genotype information, we apply cutting-edge machine learning methods—Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) and TabNet—to uncover latent microbial patterns associated with mental health traits. We further combine genome-wide association studies (GWAS), heritability estimation and Mendelian Randomization to identify causal links between host genetic variants and microbial features. The designed computational framework, informed by data from QIITA, UK Biobank and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, reveals clusters of microbiome signatures associated with sleep, fatigue and psychiatric risk. These results illuminate the bidirectional communication along the gut-brain axis and support the identification of microbial and genetic biomarkers. Ultimately, this integrative approach paves the way for precision diagnostics and microbiome-informed therapies in psychiatry.

Biography: Aranyak Goswami is a computational biologist and a tenure-track assistant professor with the U of A System Division of Agriculture. His research harnesses the power of multi-omics integration, statistical genetics and machine learning to decode the complex interplay between the human microbiome and neuropsychiatric disorders. Goswami received a 2025 Arkansas Research Alliance Impact Grant to apply AI and genomic tools to poultry pathogen research, strengthening Arkansas's agricultural resilience. Goswami is a member of the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station's Center for Agricultural Data Analytics and is affiliated with both the Animal Science and Poultry Science departments for the Division of Agriculture and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the U of A. A former postdoctoral researcher at Yale and Stanford universities, Goswami completed his doctorate in bioinformatics at the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology in 2018.

This event is supported by NIGMS of the National Institutes of Health under award number P20GM139768. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Please contact Kimberley Fuller, fullerk@uark.edu, for more information.

For those unable to attend in person, this seminar will also be available via Zoom.