Computational biology

Mining Genome-Scale Growth Phenotype Data through Constant-Column Biclustering

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B3 L5 R5209

Growth phenotype profiling of genome-wide gene-deletion strains overstresses conditions can offer a clear picture that the essentiality of genes depends on environmental conditions. In this dissertation, we first demonstrate that detecting such "co-fit" gene groups can be cast as a less well-studied problem in biclustering, i.e., constant-column biclustering. Despite significant advances in biclustering techniques, very few were designed for mining in growth phenotype data.

Drug Repositioning through the Development of Diverse Computational Methods using Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Graph Mining

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KAUST

In this dissertation, we combined artificial intelligence and machine/deep learning with chemical and biological properties to develop several computational methods to solve biomedical domain problems, specifically drug repositioning, and demonstrated their efficiencies and capabilities. We developed three network-based DTI prediction methods using machine learning, graph embedding, and graph mining. These methods significantly improved prediction performance, and the best-performing method even reduces the error rate by more than 33% across all datasets compared to the best state-of-the-art method. As it is more insightful to predict continuous values that indicate how tightly the drug binds to a specific target, we conducted a comparison study of current regression-based methods that predict drug-target binding affinities (DTBA). Our methods demonstrated their efficiency and capability by achieving high prediction performance and identifying therapeutic targets for several cancer types. We further conducted a lung cancer case study of findings that support the novel predicted targets.

Siqing Hou defends his Master’s thesis

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Siqing Hou, a Master's student under the supervision of Associate Professor Xin Gao, successfully defended his thesis.

CBRC goes to ECCB 2018

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The European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) is one of the most important conferences in the field of bioinformatics and computational biology. Held in a different European city annually, this year's conference will take place in the historic city of Athens, Greece on September 8-12, 2018.

Please see our publication page

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The SFB group has been very productive in both bioinformatics/computational biology and artificial intelligence.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Xiaopeng Xu

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Xiaopeng Xu is a computer science graduate who will join KAUST in the fall of 2020. Xu obtained a master’s degree in computer science from KAUST, and a bachelor’s degree in bioinformatics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, respectively. He will join KAUST in the fall of 2020 as a Ph.D. candidate and a member of the KAUST Structural and Functional Bioinformatics group under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao.
KAUST-CEMSE-CS-SFB-Zhongxiao-Li

Zhongxiao Li

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Zhongxiao Li is a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).​ Zhongxiao obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Southern University of Science and Technology, China in 2018. Research Interests Zhongxiao's research interests include Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

Yongkang Long

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Yongkang Long is a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Research Interests Yongkang's research interests include Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

Xin Gao

Program Chair, Computer Science
Professor Gao is a world-leading expert in developing novel AI solutions for challenges in biology, biomedicine, and health and wellness, with a focus on AI-based drug development, large language models in biomedicine, biomedical imaging analysis, and omics-based disease detection and diagnostics.

Xiaopeng Xu

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Xiaopeng Xu is a Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Structural and Functional Bioinformatics group under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao. Before joining Ph.D. program, Xiaopeng obtained a master’s degree in computer science from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and a bachelor’s degree in bioinformatics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, respectively. Research Interests Xiaopeng's research interests included Bioinformatics, artificial intelligence and computational biology.

Wenkai Han

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Wenkai Han is a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Wenkai obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2018. Research Interests Wenkai's research interests include Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

Vasiliki Kordopati

Vasiliki Kordopati obtained Master degree in Computer Science under the co-supervision of Professor Boon Ooi at Photonics Laboratory and Prof. Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Vasiliki is a co-founder of Oæsis, a King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) startup spinout, where she is responsible for product development. A computer engineer by training, she received a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece. Research Interest Vasiliki's

Somayah Albaradei

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Somayah Albaradei is a Ph.D. student at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). ​Somayah obtained her master's degree in computer science from the University of Manitoba, Canada in 2014. Professional Profile 2014: Lecturer at College of Computing and Information Technology-King Abdulaziz University - Jeddah - Saudi Arabia 2010- 2011: Teacher Assistant at College of Computing and Information Technology-King Abdulaziz University - Jeddah - Saudi Arabia 2009-2010: Collaborator

Siqing Hou

Siqing Hou obtained his Master's degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Master Thesis, 2018: Neural Inductive Matrix Completion for Predicting Disease-Gene Associations Research Interests Siqing Hou was working in the fields of Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Machine Learning. Professional Profile Research Student, University of Birmingham, Jul 2015 - Aug 2018 Software Effort Estimation, Machine Learning Education Profile M.Sc. Computer

Siyuan Chen

M.S. Student, Computer Science
Siyuan Chen is an M.S./Ph.D. candidate in Prof. Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Before joining KAUST, Chen obtained a bachelor's degree from the School of Communication and Information Engineering, UESTC, China. Research Interests Siyuan's research interests lie in bioinformatics, computational biology, machine learning, and big data. He intends to work at the intersection between computer science and biology and develop algorithms so as to solve the key problems in medicine as well as in biology.

Shrihari Sonavane

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Structural and Functional Bioinformatics
Shrihari Sonavane worked as a Postdoctoral research fellow at Prof. Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) during 2013-2014. Shrihari received his Ph.D. degree from Jadavpur University, India. Research Interests Shrihari's research interests included Bioinformatics and computational biology. Selected Publications 1. Dey Sucharita, Pal Arumay, Guharoy Mainak, Sonavane Shrihari and Chakrabarti Pinak (2012) Characterization and prediction of the binding site in DNA-binding proteins: improvement of accuracy by

Sheng Wang

Sheng Wang worked as a Research Scientist at Prof. Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Sheng got his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2010. He was then a postdoc fellow at Toyota Technological Institute in Chicago during 2010 and 2014. During 2014 and 2017, he was a research professional at the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. Since March 2017, he joined the SFB group as a research scientist. Currently, Sheng is a

Peng Chen

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Structural and Functional Bioinformatics
Peng Chen worked as a Postdoctoral research fellow at Prof. Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group (SFB) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) during 2012-2014. Dr. Peng Chen is currently a Professor at the Institute of Health Sciences, Anhui University. Prior to Anhui University, he was an Associate Professor at the Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei Anhui, P.R.China. He received his Ph.D. degree in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent System from the University of Science and Technology of China, and Bachelor and

Mario Messih

Mario Messih is a Former Visiting student from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy at Professor Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Mario Finished his Ph.D. study with Prof. Anna Tramontano at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, and currently, Mario is a postdoc fellow at Yale University. Research Interests Mario's research interests included Bioinformatics and computational biology. His main interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, statistics and their applications on analyzing large

Jordy Homing Lam

Jordy Homing Lam worked as a ​Research Associate at Professor Xin Gao's Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) during 2018-2019. Currently, Jordy is a Ph.D. student at USC. ​Jordy Homing Lam obtained his Master's Degree from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Research Interests Jordy's research interests included Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Molecular Dynamics Simulation.

Heba Abu Samra

Heba Abu Samra obtained her Master's degree in Computer Science under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao at Structural and Functional Bioinformatics Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Master Thesis (2013): A Comparative Study of Feature Selection and Classification Methods for Gene Expression Data Research Interests Heba's research interests included Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

Haoyang Li

Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Haoyang Li is a Ph.D. student in the KAUST Structural and Functional Bioinformatics research group under the supervision of Professor Xin Gao. Before joining KAUST, Haoyang majored in Bioinformatics and graduated from Jilin University (JLU), located in Changchun, Jilin, China. Research Interests Haoyang focuses on computational biology and bioinformatics. As a visiting student before, Haoyang did some research in the field of medical image analysis and metabolic reprogramming. Recently, Haoyang focuses on spatial transcriptomics techniques and has an interest in developing related methods.