Ivan G. Costa is Professor for Computational Genomics at the RWTH Aachen Medical Faculty. After graduating in computer science in 2003 at the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil), he joined the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (Germany) to pursue doctoral studies in bioinformatics. His research interest involves statistical machine learning approaches to dissect transcriptional and regulatory programs controlling cellular changes in cell differentiation and in the onset of diseases as bone marrow and kidney fibrosis. He currently emphasis on computational methods to understand how cellular microenvironment changes cause or support disease processes by integrative analysis of transcriptional, chromatin and spatial status of single cells.